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The Future of IT in America?
tomocoo asks: "As a young person considering various choices for the future career I'd like to pursue, IT and computer science continually reappear near the top of the list of fields I'm interested in. In fact, one of my only hesitations is the suspected ease by which programming and other related tasks can be sent to other countries for pennies on the dollar. How much of a threat do the readers of Slashdot feel outsourcing is to the American programmer? Should I and other young people be pursuing something more specialized or have I simply been watching too much CNN?"
Perhaps learning to speak Hindi could be of some use?
I have been hearing about the doom of the industry for a very long time. The fact is, is that IT and Computer Science follow a cycle.
Will there be a high paying job waiting for you the moment you graduate? That is impossible to predict, but long term you are almost assured to find a healthy career waiting for you.
Proof that the offshoring is an overexagerated issue? Look at average salaries of graduates. They may not be as high as you want them, but compared with any other fields they are consistently towards the top. Even now, with so much media attention focusing on the downturn in the tech economy, I doubt you would receive very much sympathy for having to receive a starting salary of over 51k. (Starting Salaries)
Anyone complaining about the lack of jobs and low pay in the industry is an anomaly. I am not saying it is their fault, but there will be people that simply have bad luck finding a job no matter what field you look at.
In short, the reason there is so much noise is simply because some people have unrealistic expectations of both finding a job and the pay they will receive. Take that away and what you have is an industry on a whole that is actually more healthy than a lot of others.
All of that being said, it is always better to specialize if your goal is more money. Almost any job will base your pay based on your expertise in the area they are looking for. If a job is looking for a C# developer and you have a little knowledge of everything then you will get paid for having a little knowledge of C#. If on the other hand you are a Java expert and have been doing nothing but Java for the previous 5 years you may not get that C# position at all, but when you find a company looking for someone with knowledge of Java you can definitely expect a higher pay.
You're way too caught up in picking a career by the "current market trend". If you're great at what you do, there will always be a market for your skill set.
If the current trend of outsourcing has you scared, what about other adverse situations? What about the next recession; are you going to run back to school and become a CPA? I'm suspect that you have a deep love for programming. When you love development, you feel it in your bones; you think about problems on your lunch break, you stay up until 3am to get that last bug worked out. If you don't have this sort of passion for creative logistics, then maybe you should reconsider other options (because you're likely to get burned out fairly quickly).
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- A workout plan that doesn't feel like homework.
As I understand it, IT employment in the US is increasing, not decreasing; you'll have a better chance if you develop skills in things like project management rather than just being a code monkey.
I am one of those young people. I'm finishing up a stint in the Army, and going back to finish my final year of my BS in Computer Information Systems. ( I was mobilized during my senior year of college.)
I firmly believe that there is plenty out there for me -- but not in something like programming, rather I believe my talent lies in being a Systems Analyst for a business, or something both technical and managerial in nature.
Sure, the off shore folks have us beat when it comes to programminng, no doubt about that -- but that's only a problem if you want to be just a programmer.
They still need people to lead and manage these teams of programmers, and perhaps that's where the value of the American IT professional is.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
Well, my experience has been that offshoring has had little impact on my business, which is security, deployment, and maintenance of internet facing computers.
I do a little coding. Some stays in house, some gets GPLd.
But from a services perspective, most of my clients have migrated to my company because we don't have tier 1 tech support, we have engineers- and our customers *hate* doing business with a company that offshores their support or engineering staff.
Every single client I have is a refugee from a services company with offshoring. Every Single One. They pay more... some times a lot more... for the services we provide. But we are also a lot more accountable to them.
FWIW- I've been successful in making a good living by being the opposite of the offshoring trend. But I think to make this work in the market place you have to run your own little business rather than seek employment from someone else.
On the down side- prepare to be awoken at 4:30am by a client calling your cell phone... because you have the shift... and both of your other engineers are in the Bahamas or Canada vacationing.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
IT: run as far away as fast and as you fucking possibly can.
Don't worry about what CNN is saying. They're not programmers. If you're a decent programmer, you'll always have a job.
Here's the bottom line, though:
If programming is something you love to do, then do it. If it's just something you want to do because you've heard it'll earn you "big bucks", don't.
Not that you can't make a good living...you can. It's just that unless you love something, you shouldn't go into it. You might be able to handle it for 10 or even 20 years, but unless your heart is really into it, you'll regret it long term.
Good luck.
There will always be vertical markets in the IT/CS industry that will dictate it staying here rather than going offshore. Good luck finding one. :)
TT
And you'll be useful to somebody. Get really good at something, and you'll be useful to everybody. Almost doesn't matter what field. Whatever it is you REALLY enjoy, there is a way to make money at it, and a way to make yourself valuable in that field. In fact, if you REALLY enjoy it, create something new and market THAT. That's the way to make real money. I don't know anybody who makes a lot of money solely based on their education credentials. I'm sure they exist, but that breed is becoming rarer and rarer.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Most of the programmers I see working in the US have something to go along with the CS major. Having an english degree with the CS degree, for example, makes you multifunctional and can specialize your work (real world example).
Outsourcing to outside from u.s. is indeed a big market-cutter for u.s. based developers. But its a brave new world. Internet is something different than us, japan, china, sweden and any country in the world combined - it is a new country. So, the 'invisible hand' in the market in this brand new 'country' similarly adjusts the prices taking the supply/demand balance into account, just as it does in the real world. Web development prices took a sharp dive as chinese and hindu entered the market and took on work for rates that virtually meant 'for nothing' earlier. Now all it matters is about competence, reliability and skill in development world. Reliability is by far the most important aspect clients seek in web development - noone takes this word lightly twice ; if its very cheap, there is something missing in any product/service. And so it happens - you get what you pay for. As a result, there is and will be very low prices around put out by hordes of software houses and developers which are new to the business and just entering the market, but the 'you get what you pay for' motto will always stand. As a matter of fact, what happens to most independent web developers or small software houses is that, after taking on around 20-30 projects, they garner a regular clientele that brings in repeat jobs for the same or similar projects, and this goes on. You wont be able to take in new clients unless you are willing to enlarge the operation by enlarging the company and making more investment. Which is a choice, can stay small and keep happy, can grow and join the foray. But all in all, web development is something that is defined by the quality of its source. Thus do not hesitate, but devote yourself to the field. If you cant or are not willing to become a netizen in the endless network that is internet - take law or medicine.
Read radical news here
I have worked on a number of software projects and the kind of projects that end up being real success stories usually have very tightly knit client/developer contact. Many of our projects (I work for a firm that writes custom web and windows applications on the small to medium scale) have weekly client meetings, initial face to face introductions, and after-deployment training and handshaking. Its cheaper by the hour, but the end/net result of using outsourced labor for programming ends up being a wash, or even worse, cheaper for using American Labor.
Callcenters are different. It is easier to manage callcenters and once the callcenter has the script / jobs down, its sort of a fire and forget thing. Good software development in my experience isn't like that.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
if your primary concern is writing software and getting a job making money doing so. You want Software Engineering.
I suggest you do some research into what Computer Science actually is before assuming you'd like to go to University for it, because if you think you'll spend the majority of your time programming, you'll be unpleasantly surprised (The obscenely high first-year dropout rates of Computer Science programs are due mostly to this misconception)
Do this with your future: What you want to do with it.
Do you really feel so tied down that you have to choose your career based on current trends? The trends won't last through when you finish your degree. Do you think that people who started their BS during the dot com boom made a dime of the millions that people made hawking their crap?
Seriously, pick a career based on what you want to do. You'll be a happier person for it.
I am a hiring manager in Silicon Valley. There is a shortage of great talent among the IT work force. In the last 12 months it has gotten harder to hire great talent and there is a definite salary inflation situation going on right now because most great candidates are seeing multiple competing offers.
Do IT only if you love it.
Consistently renew your skills. Commit yourself to a lifetime of learning new tech.
Live where the jobs are (e.g. San Jose, CA or Austin , TX).
Find a business where you are excited to apply your skills.
Avoid arrogance and treat people well.
Do these things and you'll always be in a high paying job.
Yeah, but if you're going to buy into that, the safest thing to do is to move out into the mountains, grow your own food, and have a really trusty shotgun. That, or move to Canada.
I wouldn't worry. Sure a lot of even development tasks are being farmed out to India or China. But there's still more than enough demand and competition for the top CS graduates to ensure a healthy and lucrative career.
My only advice is to get a good education, and build a good resume while you can. If you spend 6 months getting a certification-of-the-week, write a little text adventure in Visual Basic, then wonder why you're not getting six-figure salary offers to start, you're probably next on the list to be outsourced. If you've got a CS undergrad degree (or better yet, a master's degree) from a top school, then people are going to be literally fighting over you, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
One one hand we have rapid education growth globally, on the other we have rapidly growing complexity of technology.
:-) SBS2003 is comprised on Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, SQL Server 2000, Windows Sharepoint Servers pre-installed, ISA 2004 Server, and a few sophisticated web applications. Some clients also add other stack components such as Small Business Financials and MS CRM 3.0 Small Business Edition.
:-)
My prediction is that as we get out of the Bush dark ages, corrective measures will be passed to stop certain forms of offshore activity. Additionally, consumer backlash is very real these days and as the requirement for high level technology rises in general so will the demand for those who can make it work correctly.
A lot of companies are in fact abandoning or at least reconsidering their offshore initiatives. I have several clients who have offshore operations and they are scaling them back and bringing some of that work back home.
Why is this important? I support a product called Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. I am one of the leading experts on this product today. It is something you can literally buy off the shelf and setup easily. One would think that is the end.
In translation, that means that we sell a $4700 application suite for $1500. These are full products that require enterprise expertise to use them. Small Business Financials is a friendly name for Great Plains (yes, THAT, Great Plains), and MS CRM 3.0 Small Business has no feature limitations on itself either besides the maximum number of users.
If you take a typical small business owner who uses Quickbooks and throw them into this environment, they are lost. Make no mistake, they demand these applications from us and they do love them when they are customized.
I think the next era of highly complex networks is about to begin. A competent software developer specializing in making this process easier will make a killing. I know how much money my company is set to make this year and I am truly amazed at just how many untapped markets there are.
There is a lot of opportunity in IT, but I think you have to own a business to truly succeed. Working for someone else will not make it happen. That means, take some basic business courses in addition to IT when you have the opportunity.
Good luck!
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
The best advice I can give you is have stunning writing skills. You will be writing every day. E-mail, IM, proposals, agendas, reports and presentations are part of any job, even if they are a small part. Some companies don't care if you have good writing skills, but no business will complain if your skills are higher than they want.
Until the US figures out how to pull itself out of the death spiral of inflating real estate combined with deflating wages, it is best to find another way to live.
I'm not sure what you're advocating. Should the guy move somewhere else? Try a different career that will somehow be unaffected by economic fluctuations? Head for the hills and become a hermit?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Yeah you are far less likly to need the shotgun here.
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
"Programming" conjures up visions of some guy with pale complexion staring into his monitor, banging away at the keyboard, trying to fix yet another bug. Or, in a better light, maybe reading some API and/or design specification and banging away at the keyboard trying to implement it. A "programmer" can be thought of as a construction worker.
"Software Architect" is what you get when you take away the specific implementation: the programming language, the operating system, the specific database. What you're left with is the high-level big-picture design. You get to draw boxes, arrows, flowcharts, ping-pong diagrams... you get to be the guy up at the marker board smiling at the camera, pointing to a complex diagram, your vision for the product, that you don't have to spend nights implementing because that's what they pay the keyboard-bashers for. A "software architect" can be thought of as the high-paid and lauded building architect.
In a sense, software architecture is the creative side, while converting the design to code is the mechanical side.
I'm not even sure you want to talk about "going into IT". I thought IT was more like the maintenance guys of the building after it's built. Like in the UK's "The IT Crowd". It certainly wouldn't be as rewarding to me as programmer or software architect. In any case, even if all this does fall under the general heading "IT", you can at least narrow down what you want to do.
Anyway, what's this have to do with outsourcing? I think software architecture is what you want to get into, since I firmly believe that is what the US is not going to outsource -- or at least not to the extent that keyboard-bashing has.
That being said, it definitely doesn't hurt to know at least one major programming language -- either Java, or (shudder) even C#. That way you at least have some idea of the common idioms of the code, and then you don't have to specify every nut and bolt in your diagram.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
The offshoring problem is grossly overexaggerated and all it does is separate the men from the boys.
That being said, I would focus on doing something you enjoy regardless of money. It makes the difference in life. I bet a lot of people claim to enjoy their job on here, but I bet a lot of them are lying about it. Usually the money makes these jobs worth tolerating but working in a "the office/dilbert/office space" style environment is detrimental to the soul.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The consensus here, and my opinion, is that if you just want to be a generic programmer, yeh, India will screw you over. But the great thing about computer programming is that it is an applicable science in so many other fields that being just a programmer is shooting a little low. Example: By taking a few more engineering classes you can become a "Software Engineer" which is one of the fastest growing fields out there. IT is fine, it's just being satisified with knowing a language or two that will get you in trouble.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
One of your options would be to move with the job, across the world. If you are willing, you'll have a blast, enjoying the best opportunities worldwide.
But suppose that you don't want to move outside the US. However, in 2010, the US only has 30 of the jobs with mainstream skills and 45 of the jobs with specialized skills (it's easier to move overseas jobs with mainstream skills). To get the job in the US, you either need to have very good mainstream skills-- so you can get one of the 30 mainstream jobs-- or be willing to learn so you can get the specialized jobs that are available in the US.
If you can learn continually and strive to improve your skills, though, you'll live well. It's the old saw really-- just work hard.
Computer Science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering are far more powerful degrees. They are also much hard than IS. I took some IS classes to learn some new things at a local state college. I thought the classes were a joke. The classes were easy. There was no low level theory at all. No you will never directly use the theory, but if you understand the concepts its much easier to grab a book and learn the practical stuff on your own. The same school has very hard computer science courses.
Even if you want to be a network engineer. You will learn ALOT more with a computer science degree. You can then do a minor in information systems and take a few classes that you are interested in.
Computer engineering is probably the most valuable to employers. The reason is that the barrier to entry is higher. For a network administrator or a programmer you can learn it without school. You really can't learn computer engineering without school.
I am graduating in a week. The hard workers I know all have jobs. The slackers and incompetent people all do not have a job. If you aren't going to go into IT, what are you going to go into? In terms of people having jobs out of college, engineering and then business degrees are the only other ones I see. So you could go into engineering or if you want to be someones bitch, go into business. I feel bad for liberal arts majors.
I'd say you do have a future, but you have to actually work for it. Too many programmers think that their years of Visual Basic and HTML mean they can truly code, and too many people used to just Windows AD get shunted into the field.
At a non-profit I worked for as an intern, I was under three different head admins in a year and a half. The first guy was pretty good- while he didn't know everything, he could do the common stuff and figure out other things as they came around. After he left (he worked for a company that contracted out per-yearly) he got replaced by a guy who was lazy as all hell. I, the intern, had to remind him about such things as ping and ipconfig. He was also lazy, and got canned soon after starting. The third guy was alright, but also lacked some common knowledge, despite years in the field.
In short, don't limit yourself to what you know. Don't learn one programming language, learn five. Know how to administrate in both Windows and Linux/Unix. The things that are being offshored are helpdesks and jobs that don't require heavy expertise. Make yourself useful, and you're made.
You could also try going into some "different" areas. I have a year or two before I graduate as a CS major, and I'm thinking about being a computer forensics guy. With the increase in crimes done through or related to the internet, there's a growing demand by law enforcement, both local and federal, for people who can get into confiscated computers and retrieve deleted files. If not with the police force, I could work as a private detective, contracting to large corporations when they get hacked to trace it and try to find the perps.
As a young person considering various choices for the future career...
There are far too many people in this I/T business for the wrong reasons. In part, because there is a shortage and a marginally compentant employee is better than none is a currently accepted norm. That being said, your career is a life long endeavor. Those that succeed to the top in any profession have one thing in common, a passion for what they do.
So if you pick a profession and don't have a passion for it and then become a mushroom in a chair do not blame the business... blame yourself.
So before you pick a career, ask yourself will you do it with passion?
If what you're interested in is computer programming - go for it. Money magazine just ranked 'Software Developer' it's top job largely because of expected growth in the field. That said, be sure that you can write and speak well. Your key advantages over someone in India should be:
1) Timezone
2) More experience (developers there are often promoted to management too quickly)
3) Superior command of English (they'll speak it, you need to do so better)
4) Assorted cultural advantages
You will need to be able to talk to people and sort out requirements to be more valuable. The guy in India just can't sit across the table from a user of whatever you are making and discuss options, quickly estimate 'lots of effort' or 'pretty easy', and help the users tell you what to create.
At the end of the day, you'll still need to be able to write code, but you'll need to do a whole lot more as well. These days, I'm thinking that the 'whole lot more' may be more fun, but that's just me.
As for the guy who joked 'speak hindi', I'd point out that there are dozens of languages in India and when Indians from different parts of the country speak to eachother, they usually do so in English.
I've noticed a number of problems with IT as a career choice. Back in '97, I graduated with a degree in computer science and started working like everyone else. I hopped from job to job for a number of years. The longest I stayed at one place was about a year and 4 months. After a while, I finally realized my problem. I absolutely hate working in IT. There are a number of reasons why. I'm not saying that these will apply to you or anyone else, but if you feel they do, it might be a good indication that IT is not the field for you.
.NET is the newest example I can think of.
1) I can't stand having to work on other people's stuff. I don't like being given assignments that I'm not interested in and having to complete them. I'm sure people with stronger "work ethics" can force themselves to muddle through, but I'm not going to do it. Worse, there are a lot of mundane administrative tasks (like timesheets, etc.) that have to be dealt with. If I'm working for myself and getting paid based on those things, it would be different, but it always just seems like a waste.
2) Having to constantly keep up with new technology got kind of old for me. I like low-level programming in C. I don't really care for web apps and such. I tend to find the various frameworks overly complicated for no apparent reason. Most places I've interviewed with want to see lots of solid job experience with particular technologies, which can be difficult if you weren't working somewhere that used it.
3) "IT" type programming isn't very interesting. I would rather work on low-level stuff, simulations, academic problems, etc. I don't really care a bit about data migration, or making loan payment GUIs, or whatever. There's relatively little problem solving to be done, which is the whole reason I liked programming in the first place. Instead you get handed some half-assed specs and spend all your time chasing people down to figure out what needs to be done, even though none of them really know or have the authority to decide. That's when the meetings begin.
4) Did I mention meetings? I hate meetings. I can't decide if conference calls are worse or not. On one hand, you can mute the phone and make faces, but on the other, it's frustrating to have to listen to people you can barely hear, deal with flaky connections, etc., and you still have to pay attention because someone will certainly end up asking you a question.
5) Outsourcing. Not just to foreign countries or migrant H1-B visa holders, but to any third-party contracting group. There are several problems with this. Many times, consulting companies (Accenture) will put people on a project who have never programmed before. They don't even have degrees in programming. The consulting company will use a project to train them. It's real fun explaining what recursion and stack overflows are to someone on a major project.
6) If you ARE a contractor though, you might be in luck. You're more likely to get to work with newer technology, so it's easier to stay ahead of the curve. From what I've seen, full-time employees tend to have to work on maintenance rather than new development.
Right now I'm transitioning out of IT as a career. I'm still working, but as a training consultant. It pays enough that I can finally risk going into business on my own. (A non-IT business at that!) The only way I'll ever feel motivated to put effort into a "job" is working for myself. I'll never give up computers and programming, and will pursue it as a hobby (and possibly as an academic career in the future) for the rest of my life.
But work in IT in the modern business world? No way.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
I currently work for a large financial company that uses offshore workers extensively for IT. That being said there are still over 1000 IT employees in the US and we are growing our US IT employee base, we are also growing our offshore outsourcing shop. We look for different skill sets, the offshore teams are either service teams and low end coding or low end system administration, all of the project management happens in onshore teams or we have loads of developers that do the "interesting" coding as well as a few on shore system admins. Basically if you are good at what you do and driven to succeed you should be able to get work in the US. That is assuming you don't buy into the US economy is doomed because of some reason or other :)
I used to work in offshore for the same firm and I was much more worried about my job then, then I am now.
I would suggest that you take a Supplemental Major/Minor with your Computer Science Degree. Things like Computer Science/(Business, Engineering (Non Computer Engineering), Physical Sciences, etc...) That way your skills are targeted beyond just a Programmer but to a professional who is useful to your future employer on multiple levels. You can easily outsource a Programmer, but a Programmer who understands something else the business needs is much harder.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The starting salary only applies for those graduates who get jobs in the first place.
Using the NACE methodology, if 10% of CS graduates nationwide get jobs paying an average of $50K, and 90% of CS graduates don't get jobs at all, the average starting salary for a CS graduate is $50K.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
I totally agree. I code in the valley, and there are tons of jobs now. Only problem is housing prices around here are too high to justify staying in this area. We are looking to leave - go to portland or something.
But if you're down with living in an apartment and making a decent wage, it's looking really really good.
(You'd have to make about $250,000 to even look at decent house in the bay area (not to mention have $120,000 in cash for the down payment) - while the pay around here is good, it's not that good)
As the US Dollar continues to fall relative to the rest of the world, rest assured, hiring US programmers will make itself valuable once again!
If you want to make yourself good for the IT industry, don't fall back on just being able to whip up a 1000 line C file in an hour.
These days, you have to make sure you have good communication skills. You could be asked to write proposals for getting new technology, or reporting something. If your grammar and spelling skills are amiss, it will reflect very poorly on you.
At my college, which is engineer-geared and thus tosses most of those useless classes, CS majors have to take one more literature/humanities/sociology/etc. course than any other major. The reason they gave to me was a bit odd, so I won't try to pass it on, but the idea is that programmer is much more than just punching in code, and the job revolving around programming may include much more.
It's laudable that you are concerned about college, but you have the rest of your life to worry about job security. On the other hand the days in which you may bang 17-year-olds are numbered. Get your priorities straight.
-Peter
Truth to tell, asking the crowd here a question like this is going to inherently bring you biased results; but this may be what you wanted. Ask any given group of mostly construction workers if construction is a good profession to undertake and they will probably tell you it's a great profession. Ask any given group of mostly IT nerds the same question and you will get the same answer. If you are worried about job stability, don't worry; there is none anymore. Companies and jobs come and go in IT just as they do in every other industry (Enron, anyone?).
The real question you should be asking yourself is what do you truly enjoy doing naturally? Take away every task that any given job can consist of and break it down to your personality traits. If you like problem-solving then look at the types of jobs that can fulfill your needs as a problem-solver. If you like helping people, consider the kinds of jobs where you will have more interactions and impact on people directly. College and high-school students tend to think more linearly, as if taking a job in a hot profession will mean success. The truth is that the best way to be successful is to maximize your desire to do your job and do it well; otherwise you may as well work at McDonald's.
If you really enjoy working with hightech and feel pretty sure you will feel the same in 10 to 20 years from now, just go for it. Passionate people are needed in any sector. But don't rule out moving abroad for some time to get the best possible job.
The final result is that, due to the free flow of services (including labor in the form of outsourcing) between the United States and India, Indian government intervention now indirectly damages the operation of the American free market (for high-tech labor), suppressing wages and diminishing working conditions.
You see a similar phenomenon in the unskilled-labor market. Mexican government intervention in the Mexican economy generates hordes of desperate labor that floods the American market for unskilled labor. The presence of Mexican illegal aliens in the American market suppresses wages and diminishes working conditions as American employers exploit a nearly limitless supply of desperate workers willing to work for slave wages in dangerous or grueling conditions.
No job in America is safe from this destruction to the free market.
You should select the job doing the kind of work that most interests you. In your spare time on the weekend, stay abreast of international news. Vote for populist politicians who support free trade between the United States and only other (relatively) free markets like Canada and Japan, not Mexico nor India. Support policies that terminate trade between the United States and (relatively) non-free markets like Mexico or India.
Also support policies that compel Washington to aggressively intervene in both the Mexican government and the Indian government. The nature of the intervention should be at least as aggressive as the Mexican meddling (by Vicente Fox and his corrupt ilk) in the American Congress. Washington should eliminate Mexican politicians and Indian politicians who promote the economic destruction that has generated hordes of desperate labor fleeing to the United States.
At least in the Twin Cities, if you know SQL you're golden right now. Desparate shortage up here. My company has been searching for someone since January, with very few applicants, and even fewer qualified. The only two who were qualified turned us down for other offers. I came from Austin, TX, where I had spent 3 years looking for a new job. No luck -- too much competition from laid off workers. But up north there is high demand for C#, Java, SQL. Even finding a straight up, skilled HTML guru is difficult here.
IT is fast becoming a commodity which is broken into various specialties e.g. (Desktop Support, Mobile Computing Support, Help Desk, Database Administration, Server/Datacenter Support, Network Support, Installation/Migration, and Application Development). The suits now seem to have a pretty good idea what's inside the black-box known as IT and are willing to outsource any piece they feel can save money.
:)
The trick to longevity in IT is get good at a variety of things and keep moving around. If you can avoid being pigeonholed and avoid anyone really understanding what you do, then you will provide a certain value to the organization, which can not be outsourced. I suppose what I am saying is become a knowledge worker. Understand the business you support and show the suits how to use technology to their competitive advantage. If you get pigenholed as a DBA, Programmer, Helpdesk etc... then you run the longterm risk of getting outsourced. It is good to work through all the groups so you understand a bit about each piece. However, your goal after 10-years should be to report to someone important (senior management) and not be part of a traditional IT group. To put it another way, you want to be senior managements insurance policy so when they do a risky outsource, they feel you are there to bail them out if anything goes terribly wrong.
Another growing IT speciality is outsourcing consultant or outsourcing migration manager. These guys will be around for quite some time while companies outsource to try and save a buck. When the pendeulum swings the other way, you can then switch to an insourcing consultant.
My advice to you is do what you love and the money will follow. Compotency is a rare commodity in this day and time.
I will tell you straight up that there is one section that will always need programers and IT specialists which will never outsource them, government defense contractors/industry. These jobs can not be outsourced, plain and simple due to the nature of the products. If you are worried about having your job outsourced, go find a job at one of the big contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc. The other place you will always find a job is in the government itself, local, state, or federal. Don't expect the pay to be nearly as competitive if you do work for the government and also expect to fight a lot of battles about technology itself. It takes years to institute a small change in the way things are done in the government, so the technology fields can be extremely frustrating because 6-12 months and there is already 4-5 better ways to do something.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The net will get bigger. Pie will get larger for everyone. New net businesses will not all ship jobs overseas. India and China will also become consumers which will create more jobs.
The fact is that the offshoring fad is fading as people find out that it's not the cost per line that matters if you aren't getting the code you need. I'm engaged in helping save a project that went down that path too far; we got lots of code, it didn't do what was needed. We now hope to recover some value, but all development has moved back to the US, where we can interact with the customers in real time.
Everything that I hear says that Portland's a good deal. The area is heating up a bit, and you can still get a house at a good price. If you can hop on a developing area, and then ride that rising tide, that's the way to get ahead financially (if that's your goal). It's also nice to be in an expanding area, and an expanding (or new) business.
I think it's all a matter of taste, but if I weren't floating around stodgy old academic institutions, I'd be looking at shiny new tech companies.
I'm not industry analyst, but I'd say that you're right on the money.
I have an associates in IT and a bachelors in business management. That way if IT jobs go away, I can work for almost any business as a manager. I minored my bachelors in IT. Make sure you pick a good minor as well as a major.
My advice, go to a community college first and pick up some certificates and an associates and then move on to a bachelors and masters. A lot of the people out of work in the IT field lack the degrees. Companies want to hire degreed people with experience and many have the experience but lack the degree because they are self taught or dropped out of college. Don't drop out of college, that is a mistake. India, has free or discounted education for IT people so they can get a lot of the work offshored to their nation. Other nations offer free education as well. Too bad the USA does not offer free education except in cases of the lowest poverty.
One day I will go back for a masters degree and maybe a PHD. A high school diploma and associates no longer cuts it anymore in the modern work force, but they do help somewhat.
Discrimination by education is a legal form of discrimination because there is no law against it. My resume was thrown in the trash of many HR departments because it lacked at least a bachelors on it. Now that I graduated I am getting calls back.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
But you have to realize that the vast majority of IT jobs don't have a whole lot to do with computer science. According to US government predictions, there is no foreseeable shortage of systems analysts or computer scientists. Programming jobs, on the other hand, are the likeliest to get shipped overseas. So if you like hard core comp sci or you like requirements gathering and writing specifications, you're golden. But if you're a code monkey that does little more than translate business rules from English into code, then you might want to worry. If you want to see some pretty solid projections on the future of any particular job title in the US, I highly recommend that you visit the website of the bureau of labor statistics.
Network types are also pretty safe, especially the ones that work with hardware. While it might be easy for a company to outsource networking, it's hard to get away from the fact that so much networking requires a warm body on site.
But as for me, I've had it with IT. After ten years doing helpdesk, software testing and/or programming, I've had my fill. I'm saving my pennies to be able to afford to go back to work on a doctorate and become a cranky old professor out in the middle of nowhere.
As long as you survive the Iran deployment.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
I'd say that if both are showing up, either the testing methodology is a mess, or else you need to give considerably more thought to what you really want. At least IMO, the mindsets needed for IT and computer science are enough different that almost no one person is likely to be particularly good at both.
IT mostly involves applying existing knowledge. It's true that you need often to write bits of code, typically in some scripting language to apply the existing knowledge to your exact situation.
Though the term is often mis-applied, computer science is really about research into things like algorithms, languages, computability, etc. For a true computer scientist, writing code is mostly a sideline, and the code s/he writes will often be little more than a proof of concept to demonstrate something they've invented (e.g. a demonstration implementation of a new algorithm). The code he writes will rarely have much practical applicability -- if he's demonstrating a sorting algorithm, it'll probably have a nearly unusable user interface. OTOH, if he's doing user interface research, it probably won't implement any real algorithm behind that interface.
More or less halfway between the two is software engineering. At least as I'd use the term, software engineering is what many "computer scientists" really do. Specifically, a software engineer is somebody whose primary job is to develop software. The software engineer should be aware of what the computer scientists have invented, and (particularly) needs to have a broader perspective, to help produce complete applications including both (reasonably) optimal algorithms and decent UIs.
From a corporate perspective, computer science falls under "research". Software Engineering falls under "development", and IT falls under operations.
Consider a single task: doing backups. A computer scientist might deal with something like inventing a faster method for coalescing incremental updates to a file to produce the final output more quickly. The software engineers write the backup program that implements this algorithm, along with a decent UI, etc. The IT person is responsible for ensuring that the backup program is run at the right times, ensuring the correct backup media are in the drives at the right times, etc.
A computer scientist will usually be absent-minded, idealistic and will focus on future possibilities. An IT specialist will be pragmatic, focused on the here and now, and his single largest strength will often be presence of mind.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Do a job that you love. There are up sides and down sides to this but the up side is that you can enjoy going to work where you will spend a significant portion of you life. The downside is that your love may change and what used to be fun is now a chore. I was first a musician, and after 3 years on the road decided it was not fun anymore. I then went back to University and learned about computers. Luckily, I still love it 25 years later.
Another up side, is that if you love to do something you will get better at it. This means that you will become the craftsman that people want to have working for them. Your salary will increase and you will be employed.
A third upside is that your enthusiasm about your work will show. When you go for job interviews it will show. People feel more comfortable hiring someone who they can see has enthusiasm and a proven experience.
The nice thing about the computer field, is that it's large enough that you can partition your hobby and work into 2 different types of work, so you don't become overexposed in the one at work.
I agree there is a serious problem especially in the North East. The housing prices have gone through the roof around here. Where 6 years ago you could get a 2 bedroom home for $125k you can now bairly get the same home for $400k. And in that same timeframe salaries have bairly increased 5-10% total, which just about covers the costs of inflation, let alone the ~300% increase in home costs. I will be lucky to get anywhere near 10% of the costs of a home saved up to purchase one on my current salary. Heck 10 years ago, it was considered standard that you put down 20% of costs on the home when you bought it. Most people I know right now are getting "intrest only" loans, because that is all they can afford to do. Well, with an "intrest only" loan, you never pay off the priciple unless you make seperate payments. You are basically just throwing money away. In fact you might as well be renting, since at least when you rent, you get to call up the landlord and have them fix the things that break, with the intrest only loan, you need to fix those same things when they break, and you still don't own those items...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
There are always openings for good people, because there's a need to have people close to the problems who are resourceful and creative and able to solve them. Outsourcing is most effective for gruntwork -- building implementations of code that's already been specced out -- but if you're one of the people who's there on the ground who can look at a problem and see the solutions available even if they're not always within the same specialty, you'll never have trouble finding work.
Don't cowboy things: Learn and follow best practices, but have enough knowledge of the underlying works to be able to play cowboy. You don't want to use that knowledge much -- but when it's necessary, it makes a huge difference. Learn a lot of different things, and don't skip the academic background -- most of it's useless in the Real World, but every so often you really need to know how a state machine works, or how to build a normalized database schema, or how to calculate the big-O notation for an algorithm you're thinking of. Learn the underlying bits: Sometimes it'll help you figure out what's going on at an application level if you can watch the syscalls and understand what they're doing. Don't be a programmer who knows nothing about system administration, or a system administrator who knows nothing about programming; either of those types is crippled.
Databases are important. Know how, why and when to use views, stored procedures, transactions, and all the other crap that the MySQL people used to tell folks were unnecessary, performance-reducing fluff. (Be very sure you know associated best practices; if you're hired to do the backend of a webapp, allowing SQL injection attacks or forcing the database to reparse your SQL statements every time can make for some extremely unhappy coworkers).
Play around with new frameworks. Try writing drivers for some nifty but unsupported hardware. Understand what the different views of revision control are and what the strengths and weaknesses are of each. Learn a variety of scripting languages, and try embedding them in your larger apps. Be sure you know C (not C++, plain C) -- and when to use it, and when not to. Learn how video codecs work. Teach. Volunteer. Do stuff that isn't on this list that I never thought of. Hang out with people who are much, much better than you -- if you can, get an internship at a company full of them.
If all the stuff I told you to do sounds like fun, you're cut out for the job -- you'll love it, be good at it, and never have trouble finding employment.
After your undergraduate technical degree (EE, CE, CS, etc) get an MPH or an MS in Informatics, and look for an IT job in health care. Health care may be the most under automated sector of the economy. There is a groundswell of need at the small offices where 60% of health care takes place. These are the sites that are seriously under-automated. Check out the American Medical Informatics Association's 10x10 program (http://www.amia.org/10x10/), which seeks to graduate 10,000 new informaticians within the next 4 years to handle the growing need for automation in health care. If you don't have time for a degree, then just hit Sourceforge and join one of the dozens of open source projects developing the next generation of solutions for small medical practices (FreeMed, ClearHealth, OpenEMR, OpenHRE, OpenEHR, etc.). Or visit the openhealth listserv (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/) to check out the global open source health care software discussion.
Lawyers and accountants will never have a hard time. Remember who makes the laws.
In my eperience, a good education and resume get you in the door, but good worker habits get you further.
C|N>K
So where do you work since IT is dead? I still have a job in IT and am actually going on an interview in a week for a better IT position. This is in a rural Southern town.
IT in America is much better than IT in India. For one, we speak the native language and share a similar culture. Being able to communicate effictively and quickly with each other is an important part of the client/employee relationship. I have read several articles on how a firm in America has to add managerial staff to manage the IT firm in India that they are outsourcing to. Time frames are longer, delays are inevitable, and miscommunications are natural due to being half way around the world and speaking a diffirent language. It is also important that everyone is on the same "page." The culture in India is diffirent from our culture. What might be exceptable programming practice or work ethics in India don't necessarily mesh with our ways.
You also have to consider that at the end of the day, you paying someone half way around the world for a product. If you aren't happy with the product, you can't exactly chew someone out unless you want to go all the way to India and pound on someone's desk. There is a time honored tradition in America that a boss wants to look someone in the eye when chewing them out. Wait till a few projects end up in the crapper, and managers will be begin to understand that although it is cheaper in India initally, the product is going to wind up as crap and having to be redone by a good firm.
Don't get me wrong, I think Indian programmers will be great working on projects for Indian based companies. But programming is something that will eventually be declared to be done best by those people closests to the client. I would even consider working on a programming project for someone in Iraq.
Ahhh! He said IT... Now I`ve said it. I`ve said IT again. I`ve said IT again.
Ni. Ni! Ni!
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
The current arbitrage opportunities between the US market and other labor markets (India, Eastern Europe, China), like all arbitrage opportunities, is on the path to disappearing. I know many of you will look at bold statement with a high degree of skepticism.
In fact, I will go even further, within 20 years labor costs will not be a factor in moving work to India, Eastern Europe, or even China.
How do I back up these statements? Well, in my last position I was the dotted-line manager of an India team for a major software company. The 2005 raise budget for the India campus was 18%! Yes, that is correct. And this was on top of a mid-year, across the board, salary adjustment of 10%.
Simply put, salaries cannot grow at this rate (a CAGR of 29%) for an extended period of time without coming into line with those in the US. The ratio between the US and India is no longer 1:10, it is more like 1:4 and shrinking. This is the reality of a world which is flat. Things reach a point of balance. And in this case, the point of balance is moving up.
When I speak to companies who are doing offshoring these days, I am not hearing issues about labor costs at the front of the back. Rather, it is about finding specific skill sets and to attract people who don't want to live in Silicon Valley, the US, etc. Least you think the last point is fantasy, I personally know of a good 1/2 dozen folks who have moved to India and China (accepting local pay packages) in order to have a better quality of life (for example, household servants).
So, contrary to what Lou Dobbs would have you believe, IT and High Tech jobs are not leaving the US for India and China. IT and High Tech is alive and well in the US and will be for some time.
So my words to you: go for it! You will have a blast and will be able to feed your family.
Yours,
Jordan
Skilled Trade...
The amount of money you will make upon completing a CS course to say a plumbers apprenticeship is incomparable. If you are worried about job security the IT industry offers little or none unless you have a serious amount of experience and then.....
Certainly, general IT folks will have competition overseas; I don't think there's any way around that. However, there should always be decent jobs in the States.
However, I think it would be good to find another field that interests you and study that as well. Then you may be able to integrate your knowledge of computers with that other discipline.
Me, although I have a CS degree, I'm thinking of studying economics for that very reason. I'm very interested in financial markets and and product pricing and other issues that could go with economics.
What do YOU enjoy -- Geology? Forrestry? Management? Cartography? Whatever it is, it probably integrates with computer science somehow, and if you are good at both, you may have a good shot at getting a decent career that will excite you.
Put these pieces together and you'll realize that this may very well be one of the best times in history to get into this field. Good luck.
I'm 36 and in IT for a living since the dot-boom. If you like IT, do it. Don't do it for the money. Do it because you like it. I actually studied art and have a diploma in arts. I jumped into IT (web stuff) as a sidestep. I studied Art for the fun of it. Now I'm doing IT (mostly) for the fun of it.
General rule goes like this:
The easiest way to success is
1) Doing what's fun.
2) Doing it good.
3) Telling people about it.
Mind you, IT being a difficult subject and still a booming industry, it is not that a bad carreer choice.
As for the future of IT I can only ashure to you that IT is extremely rapidly becoming an industrialized profession. Code Generation, extensive OOAD everywhere, low-level OS commodity, ubiqious high speed solid-state storage just around the corner, etc... Once it's all there we'll start seeing the world moving into new territory like robotics and a growing field of robot-AI programming.
If you wan't a hint: Don't waste your time with ready-made proprietary lock-in software (read: stay away from Microsoft, SAP, etc.). Companies come and go, OSS is here to stay. But don't waste to much of your time with Linux/BSD/Whatever admining either! Learn the basics (programming, File Herarchy Standard, etc.) and then move to OOAD quickly. If you want a compromise between fun and money, Java could be a good choice for the plattform these days (even though it's a compromise between OSS and closed source). Whatever you do, don't get so obsessed with your favourite pet technology that you don't see the world advancing around you. You'll be part of last years league faster than you think.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Be sure you learn ajax. And get certified in web 2.0.
The fact of the matter is that any of the white collar professions typically rely on knowledge work and it is, by far, the most readily transferred over seas. You don't need to build factories or even ship anything, you just need to hook somebody up to the Internet and you're good to go.
That means, in the long run, if you're in these fields you are going to be at risk for being outsourced. As long as your phyiscal presence isn't requisite for your job, there's a chance this can happen to you. Having said that, much of the work does require a physical presence when you really think about it.
Programming, in the sense of, reading a spec and implementing it can be done anywhere on earth at any time of the day. But developing requirements and designing a system does require some presence practically speaking. There are just some things that are easier to do sitting around a conference table with a white board than on a phone call.
Many companies do outsourcing, but the smart ones are using it to offload the more repetitive mechanized parts of the work to save their smart local workers for the higher level tasks. It lowers your costs and it frees up your developers from the tedious stuff that they probably never wanted to do in the first place.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Ah yes... the unpaid overtime. I worked one place where they had me in 18 hours a day, every single day, for 8 weeks. This was entirely caused by the main project manager, who was a complete twit and totally screwed everything up. She chewed me out one day for going home on time, even though I had gotten sick from being awake so long. The project was in a complete death spiral because she was making technical decisions that she was eminently unqualified to make.
For example, before hiring any programmers or technical people, she and a couple of other business analysts mapped out the data flow of the application without considering how the pieces involved talked to each other. Then they broke everything into chunks and dumped it on me and a couple of other guys. It turned out the flow couldn't possibly work and I was the lucky person who discovered it. Another time, she shot down our DBA's schema design, then a few months later we had to use it anyway because, of course, the DBA was right all along.
During this time, I couldn't watch "Office Space" without my blood pressure going through the roof.
How's the IT seminar business going?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
...
This is really rather the truth from where I'm standing.
If you live near Boston or Silicon Valley maybe there are still entry-level positions to be filled with "entry-level people", but in the US midwest it's just not so, the job postings tell a different story. Masters or bachelors minimum, PLUS several years working in the general job tasks involved, PLUS experience in the particular software and hardware they are using. Companies simply aren't interested in entry-level people, and in the mean time you may "love" IT now, but after a few years of struggling to pay off student loan collections from the paychecks of your retail or fast-food job,,,, you very likely won't.
Unless you are either-
A) absolutely brilliant, or
B) have a close relative at a huge corporation who can snag you a gravy position,
stay away from IT.
Most companies don't want new graduates at US pay rates, period.
I'd suggest something with broader applications, majoring in math with minor in a technical field. Then when they say they want to hire you for IT work, you can ask them to pay for the schooling and you'll find out how interested they really are.
~
But as for me, I've had it with IT. After ten years doing helpdesk, software testing and/or programming, I've had my fill. I'm saving my pennies to be able to afford to go back to work on a doctorate and become a cranky old professor out in the middle of nowhere.
Funny... that sounds just like me. I started 10 years ago and I'm similarly completely sick of IT as a career. What kind of doctorate work are you thinking of going into?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
While this reply doesn't really address the computer IT issues you raised, I figured I'd make a suggestion anyway. The one industry that is always hiring is the medical field. If you want job security, and a variety of jobs as well, then I'd suggest looking into the medical industry. Want to have a job anywhere in the United States? Registerd Nurse is the way to go, in regards to the medical field I mean. I'm a programmer, and if my back wasn't shot I'd be mid-way through school to become a nurse right now. As it is I'm still tossing up trying to get another degree, in nursing this time, so I can have a steady field to work in.
----- Blake
Do what you love. Be the best. The rest just happens.
My website
As someone who has worked in both the Silicon Valley in the US and the Far East, I can only say that I haven't looked back the day when I stopped hiring US software engineers and moved the development center to China. For companies like Oracle etc, what they are doing now is stop hiring in the US but continue to increase their headcount in India and China. The reason is simple: US IT staff salaries are just too high to be competitive. I can get the Chinese engineers to produce the same code for 10% of the cost. Then when you look at the skills that the US software engineers possess apart from the usual technical skills, they are just pathetic. For instance, I need all my software engineering staff to be able to read and write English and Chinese. That rules out 99% of the resumes I received in the US. When I started hiring in China, 100% of the local candidates can read and write English (though not perfect). The reality is it is only going to get worse for the US IT staff.
Last week I conducted 7 interviews for one of the four positions I have open. All resumes looked good, not a single US citizen.. Four sucked so bad they had no chance on the technical portions. One could not be understood so maybe he was technically qualified, maybe not. The remaining two were able to answer 60% of the technical questions about something they claimed to have 5 years experience in. If you become skilled and have a good attitude, ie a willingness to attend meetings, work long hours (often you will be paid for every hour worked) and can get along with other homosapiens you can be guaranteed a position. For those that don't believe me and meet the above requirements with skills in Siebel admin, WMQI admin, AIX applications, IDTI or Siteminder/Transactionminder send me your resume and a contact method. Bottom line if you love IT you can excel....
My dad once told me 'Don't go into computers, because it's all going to be outsourced to India'. In my opinion, not necessarily the best advice he's ever given me. Consider:
> Don't go into mathematics, because it's all going to be outsourced to India.
> Don't go into business, because it's all going to be oursourced to China.
> Don't go into operations, because it's all going to be oursourced to Brazil.
If you notice the pattern here, you'll see that these claims are each in the form of:
> Don't go into $DIFFICULT_SUBJECT, because it's all going to be oursourced to $COUNTRY.
In my opinion, this attitude is caused by fear of competition. The same kind of fear that prevents perfectly qualified applicants from applying to college because 'there are more qualified people who will get picked before me', or that prevents people from running marathons because 'its difficult and i might not finish the race'. If you want to take this kind of fear to the extreme, let us consider the absurd examples:
> Don't go into reading, because it's all going to be outsourced to India.
> Don't go into writing, because it's all going to be oursourced to Europe.
> Don't go into storage, because it's all going to be outsourced to China.
> Don't go into thinking, because it's all going to be oursoured to Japan.
> Don't go into algorithms, because it's all going to be oursoured to Germany.
> Don't go into logic, because it's all going to be outsourced to those damn Vulcans.
etc. etc.
Ignore this kind of thinking. It's fear mongering, defeatist thinking, and anti-intellectualism held by people who don't understand computers.
However, that being said, I would also point out that just going into computers for computers sake is quite possibly not what you want to do. Rather, having a strong foundation in comptuter science, coupled with skills in mathematics, algorithms, business, operations, and $OTHER_SUBJECT is what you want to have. Whether $OTHER_SUBJECT is healthcare (i.e. genomics research, hospital operations, etc) or entertainment (i.e. 3D effects, video production) or whatever else, the idea is to be able to use computers to achieve other tasks. When you are able to use computers to achive results in other fields, that's a powerful combination, and sets you apart from others when a) you have core IT skills that the rest of your applications department doesn't have, and b) you have application specific skills which your IT department doesn't have.
> In fact, one of my only hesitations is the suspected ease by which
> programming and other related tasks can be sent to other countries
> for pennies on the dollar.
List the jobs which cannot be "sent to other countries". Which of them do you want?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Remember that an IT degree doesn't necessarily limit you to a job in the IT field. Besides the many jobs open to anyone with a college degree, you can use your technical background to move into other fields. Combine it with biochemistry for a job in the pharmaceutical industry. A solid math background is attractive to financial companies. Physics, geology, climatology, accounting, library science -- the list is virtually endless. There will always be options available to people willing and able to use their technical background outside of IT and programming.
I went from an MS in computer science to software developer to teaching cs to law school. Law is an incredibly broad field and technical skills will serve you well in any area, not just intellectual property.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Programming is the act of automating some level of complexity, usually made up of simpler complexities, but done so in order to allow the user to use and reuse the complexity through a simplified interface. And this is a recursive act, building upon abstractions others have created that even our own created abstractions/automations might be used by another to further create more complex automations. In general, if we didn't build upon what those before us have done, we then would not advance at all, but rather be like any other mammal incapable of anything more than, at best, first level abstraction. But we are more, and as such have the natural human right and duty to advance in such a manner.
Now maybe there is some hope that the general public will never be given the decimal system of programming that they may do it themselves, as they find need to. Instead the roman numeral system of complexity beyond the general user can only be reinvented so many times before it becomes abvious.
But what this really means is the boring tasks of reinventing the things IT does over and over, would instead be done by those who actually use it for productivity. And that the more interesting leading edge would be left to those with a focuse on software advancement.
And it also means that the babeling patent claim of human mental activity woudl be exposed as an attempt to force people
to be stupid, will come to an end cause there is no money left in it, in comparison to moving forward.
Concerned about outsourcing??? to other countries or to the general population?
By your logic you should be looking for a minimum wage untrained labor job as those will be opening up fast if the feds continue to crack down. I would recommend reading Steve Jobs commencement speech given last year at Stanford if you are seriously considering computer science. I love it. I am a CS mater's candidate and the future looks very bright. But I love the feild and that makes all the difference. here's the link: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/ jobs-061505.html
good luck in whatever you do.
That, or move to Canada.
Might want to reconsider Canada if you want to avoid the property inflation. The city I live in (population of aproximately 300,000) has an avgerage housing price of about $400,000 CAN. Want a 4 bedroom 20 year old home? That'll be $500,000. How about a new home of that is 2,400sqft? That'll be more than $600,000 CAN. Of course that is in a city where is doesn't snow half the year. If you love snow and slush and don't need ammentities like a selection of shopping, then sure you can get some cheap property.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Just attended a seminar put on by industry people at my U. One question I asked was about automation versus outsourcing. Highly underrated are concerns about automation in technology that threaten to globally lower jobs. They mentioned that translating english language problems to code is far from being automated, but to stay away from call center jobs as websites answer many questions.
Ive always found the networking and sysadmin aspect of computers to be far more interesting than programming. when i was in HS i was responsible for any macintosh troubles that came up on campus, because there were only 3 labs that used them and the techs wouldnt touch them. i got to work with my own little networks and even now 2 years after graduation i still get called in to help with mac stuff. right now i have an entire lab netbooting off the server so the students can both use the full 30GB of space on each eMac for video, and so they cant fark up the systems. im going to apply for a job there in june, hopefully full time. ive got a few teachers who will put in a good word for me with the district.
Get into Information Security and stop worrying about your industry being outsourced. The PHBs and other ilk are usually reluctant to outsource security operations offshore. Look at all the SOX and HIPPA regs out there now and you'll see why your job wouldn't get outsourced. The worst you have to worry about is working for a company that decides to replace you with managed security services. Big deal...
Become a coder and at some point, someone else in a cheaper place will code it for cheaper. It's a vicious cycle you can't escape.
5) You can get a security clearance in the US, assuming you are a citizen, and jobs for which such things are required are not going anywhere, because they simply can't.
The Federal government is a huge employer, as are the contractors who supply them with additional cleared personnel. Defense contracting also need IT folks in-house who are cleared.
Towards the end of the '90s, rather than relocate qualified talent within the US (no more relo expenses), they outsourced the jobs en masse to places overseas. And the galling excuse given? "Well, we simply don't have the talent here in the US." (Thank you, Craig Barret of Intel!) Truth be told, you did and to some extent still do (use it or lose it... lots of people losing it) have the talent here-- just not in a cheap convenient local bundle in the rural areas where the businesses have relocated.
So, suddenly Jimmy is told by his mom and dad, "Don't do IT-- it's being outsourced-- study something else." And thus the brain draining vacuum became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bottom line, if you're going to do something-- be it IT or something else-- do it to the best of your abilities, and if you can't get what you want from the establishment (corporate america) then innovate and create it for yourself (start your own business, or start an open source project).
One resounding thought in the IT industry is to constantly upgrade onself. I have been in the industry for only 1.5 years but I constantly see the need to upgrade myself to stay ahead of the competition and earn more favor with my bosses.
I suppose the first questions to ask yourself is why you are looking at going into IT. Are you looking for a stable career? Are you looking for fortune? Do you really enjoy computers and programming as a hobby and think it would be cool to earn a living doing something you enjoy or are you just looking for any job that you can earn a living doing?
I went into technology as a programmer/software enginner because I loved working with computers and I saw a way make a living while doing something I love. Ten years later I still love it. I've always prefered hands on development and prefer coding and on some project I like being the technical lead, but otherwise I have avoided the management-side of IT. I could make more money, but at a huge cost to my personal satisifaction.
Why do you want to go into IT?
In the last 12 months it has gotten harder to hire great talent and there is a definite salary inflation situation going on right now because most great candidates are seeing multiple competing offers.
I know it may be a bit crass, but could you quanitfy that somewhat? If you want to narrow the field, maybe assume a developer with 8 years in C++ and Java on mostly server software and some project management experience.
:-)
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
will like inflating real estate.
Gambling on real estate is like gambling on stock. It's only fun as long as you can find someone stupider than you, who will pay you more than you paid someone smarter than you for a used house. When you're at the bottom of the chain of stupid, you're screwed.
The solution is to not treat your house as an investment. It is not the "american dream". It is where you live, and thats it. If you want to play with "investing" do it with money other than what you're using to live on.
Good day young man, My advise is if you love programming, you will be a success. DO NOT do what I did. I graduated with a BS in computer science with a GPA of 3.8 but not for the love rather for the money. I found that programming was not my career of choice. Money should not be your major concern right now but definitely a consideration. To be realistic here, I will not blow smoke like a career councilor will. You have to chose a career that will pay the bills! Do not follow the theory that choosing a career field you love will make you happy. You have to differentiate between hobby and something that will provide enough money to support yourself and a family. I see too often that young man or women choosing a field such as Psychology, sociology, history or art...etc that makes them happy as a bedbug in college but dirt poor when the real world hits them post graduation. Find a happy medium. Hell, if you love going to work everyday 40+ hours a week, you are the few and the lucky. Cherish it! Now if your love is something like "Biology" like me, know that you have a very slim chance of making good money. What am I doing now? I am a Systems Engineer for a fortune 500 company. I like it and prefer it over programming. Do I love it? No, but I found that happy medium. I find time to do hobbies like archeology, anthropology and biology on my spare time. Engineering systems pays the bills and at times it can be fun. To sum it up. Be realistic, pay attention to the markets and futures of careers. Volunteer! Sit with programmers or another choice for a couple weeks. If you like it AND feel this is what you want to do FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? Brothers and sisters, GO FOR IT!
Portland is becoming a suburb of California. Where I live (West Linn, a suburb of Portland) housing prices have increased quite a bit since I bought my house three years ago. I was somewhat annoyed that I couldn't cash in on the SanFran housing boom, but now it looks like the market will be coming to me.
So, by all means, move to Portland! Drive our housing prices up so I can retire at 35 instead of 40!
Anyone complaining about the lack of jobs and low pay in the industry is an anomaly
Then I must be living amongst the biggest anomaly in the US, the Midwest/Rust Belt region. Here, job requirements are engineered to meet loopholes, not US citizens who are quite well skilled.
Come to the Midwest sometime, as you may be seeing quite a huge "anomaly". First of all, it is offshoring, combined with the rising tuition costs (insanity comes to mind when over >$5k/yr), with the third fatal strike of increased selectionism.
Proof that the offshoring is an overexagerated issue? Look at average salaries of graduates. They may not be as high as you want them, but compared with any other fields they are consistently towards the top. Even now, with so much media attention focusing on the downturn in the tech economy, I doubt you would receive very much sympathy for having to receive a starting salary of over 51k.
Rethink what you've just said until tuition and admission for any citizen to any university is guaranteed and that such tuition is low cost if not covered by redirected corporate/agricultral subsidy. Until then, you're going to have to endure the sharp pain of the truth that Dobbs is talking about. It must be scary to hear it, but the truth is that people do NOT want the Gilded Age (of 2 class society) to happen again no matter how it is done.
This quote that was in the article applies quite well, and it's not towards the financial definition, but more an insult to the Ivy League selectionism:
Knowledge, sir, should be free to all! -- Harry Mudd, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Those are two VERY different things.
/hour. If you have a degree in comp sci, you will be expected to work weekends recoding the Microsoft Frontpage 98 website of the company, and making it compatible with the 'latest IE6 technology' by "integrating innovative software solutions with Microsoft Front Page 2003" (or whatever the latest piece of trash from the Micro Shaft is... If you're lucky they'll even pay you for it, that or buy you lunch (probably the latter).
*Job in computer science = programmer getting paid 51k/year. You might end up actually building software, though most likely you'll get a job in the so called "defense" industry, making a living rewriting code for yet another way of bringing death to others. If you have ethics, or lack friends in the business of death, then this job will be closed to you and you'll have to go wait tables, flip burgers, or reeducate yourself, and consider comp sci as something that prepared you for the future... and not much else.
*Job in IT = 40 hours plus overtime hourly pay as a windows only troubleshooter at 6 to 10 bucks
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I hate to belabour the obvious, but when I hear people complain about housing prices and low wages, I always ask if they voted for George Bush. If they did, then I suggest they take a small bat and whack themselves in the head a few times. Free-market economics are an express-train to a poor middle-class. Republican politics is just telling the driver "come on through!" We are all sitting on the rails.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I haven't met many FAT or extremely LAZY swedes. They're also better educated and many of them can figure things out for themselves, (manage to stay abreast of news and the like).
Their currency is currently a paper currency, subject to the inflation / interest based Central Bank system pioneered by the wonderful Rothschild family (originated by Mayer Amschel Bauer, renamed MA Rothschild later). However, the Swedish Krona is trading at nearly 25% higher than the USD... or was... currently 6 or 7 krona get you 10 dollars... and the price is only dropping on the dollar.
If you recall, Volvo was a swedish company, and Ford, despite buying them out, realized that they had a lot to gain by letting the swedes do their thing without screwing them over (too much). As a result, Ford is doing okay... and selling product... GM... heh... well GM ain't doin' so hot. (Plus, nationalized healthcare, I believe, is helping Volvo keep the single most killer cost of business down... unlike US based labor markets that tax the employee like nuts, yet offer nothing, forcing the company to offer benefits, healthcare and retirement.)
The fiat currency is what is killing everything, however. And until the geeks don't wake up, they'll keep working their asses off to pay the interest on the money in their pockets.
Ever wonder why solid assets retain their value... ahem... "appreciate" in value?
That house you bought for 100k before the Iraq war might be worth 150k now... why? Oh I dunno, because the "federal" reserve (read "Privately Held United States Central Bank") issued nearly 120% inflation in one brazen stroke to fund the war. So while you might get 150k back for your house, you really will not have gained a thing. You're thinking in numbers, instead you should be thinking in "relative" or "perceived" value. If the inflation went up 120% that means there is double the money "in play" (which is understandable as the "fed" has recently STOPPED printing the M3 report which issues how much currency is issued and in what forms...)
Lets say you sell your house, at 180k, you had bought it at 100k, and you paid it all off so you get what you sell it at. Now, according to the no longer published figures, to retain its buying value, the house should sell at 220k... (100k +120%), however selling at 180k, while your house "appreciated" it didn't beat inflation. Yep, you LOST money. But what do I know, you got more paper, right?? that makes you... uhhh... rich?...
Oh well, I've only watched the feces pile up... and everyone defends the system to the death.
It makes me feel like I'm awake but still trapped in the matrix.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
As always, much of this debate ends up being silly, with people arguing like ships passing in the night about whether IT is a high-value field. The problem is that IT, or even Computer Science or Programming is way too broad.
Saying you want to go into IT is a little like saying you want to go into Health Care. Do you want to be a dentist's receptionist? a nurse? A neurosurgeon? A plan administator? An orderly? A professor at a medical school?
Just as there are huge differences in pay, satisfaction, and job description in Health Care, there are huge differences in IT. Many of the wealthiest people in our society started out as programmers; other programmers make a few dollars an hour in Eastern Europe or India. This is like the orderly vs. neurosurgeon situation, but computer science is too new to have good, well known distinctions among roles.
So, assess your level of intelligence and dedication, and think about your path. Are you planning on taking Java classes at the local community college or getting a Ph.D. at Stanford? The required investment, and the returns, will be so vastly different that they can hardly be grouped in the same category. Try to guess what level people are talking about to put there advice in perspective. Are they saying being an orderly is a bad career, or being the CTO of a technology company?
V0N4G3 gives T3H F00T to the SMUG K0RE4N D00D??!!!!!
That's only true for non free software, where price is the driving issue. It's not that non free software written offshore is always worse than domestic, it's that non free will never be as good as free. In the free software world, quality is the driving issue, regardless of where it comes from. Free sotware, by leaveraging co-operative effort, puts better quality tools in your hands for less money than commercial offerings. People trying to sell software went going offshore to lower their costs, but it's a downward spiral of low quality and greed. Free software is showing them up and the whole movement will dissapear with boxed software.
That leaves a lot of opportunity for the programmer. The majority of programming jobs are in house, where free software is most useful. Those jobs are very difficult to get done with commercial or offshore software. A good manager will realize this. A programmer who is also a leader will be able to convince their manager it is true.
People will pay for the tools they need and the software will continue to be written. The non-free middle men are the ones who are on the way out.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ok, my case is a little bit different, but I've been reading this blog with great interest. I am looking at going into a networking IT field.. I get out of the military in December and I am moving to Austin, TX in January to begin my new life.. I have been in the military for the last *9* years and joined straight out of high school, so to say that I'm a bit nervous about it is the understatement of the year. I have been assigned to submarines for 7 1/2 years of my service, not exactly the greatest place to try and work on college courses, so I really do not have any college education and I'm not sure that I see going full time student is going to be possible as I do have mouths to feed. I have been working with computers since I was a kid, I actually did work for a couple internet providers starting when in 94 (I was 15 years old). I have had Certifications in NT (never finished MCSE), plan on getting some updated ones very soon. NT Certs are no longer recognized. Did my CCNA few years back, also expired, getting that back up to date within the next couple months. I had a business license with a friend for a couple of years while in the military, we had one customer, 6 H&R Block locations, we were responsible for giving the owner of those stores his first year that he did not have any downtime during tax season (he was used to over a week per store per season) .. Best reference I could ever hope for there.
My experience:
9 years working with IT in the Navy (I'm a missile tech, so IT is not my primary duty, however I was the only lan administrator on my last boat for about 4 years)
2 years working with H&R Block
Worked with DOS, Windows NT / 2000 / XP / 2003, MS Exchange, HP-UX, Linux, Novell 3.12, Cisco equipment.
I will have my CCNA again when I get out, possibly my MCSE as well, ... I'm really good with this stuff, I can troubleshoot anything, and I'm an incredibly hard worker that loves this field. I am lacking the whole collage education.. I only hope that this doesn't hurt me to much.
Basicly, I would like to hear it, straight from all of you, how do you honestly think I will do in Austin? Am I heading for trouble? should I focus on anything specific?
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
I agree. The ones to worry are the people who got into IT / Computer Science because it looked like a good money-maker- not because they had a passion for it. Everyone can look around their office and see the difference. If you have a passion for the field in the first place and are looking for an excuse to jump in- I say jump in. Write great code and make a difference. I know it sounds cliche, but if you're doing something you love, you're simply that much more likely to succeed. There's always room for someone with the love for solving problems. CS in my opinion is problem-solving in a kind of pure medium- the ultimate flexibility on how you can get them solved. You'll be able to move those skills around no matter what happens with industry trends.
I know plenty of comp sci guys waiting tables, searching bags at airports and trying to retrain.
I know quite a few hardware engineers who made the transition to coding when necessary, and who make good cash working a field they like. I, myself was a comp sci student who should've been in engineering (those rare bastards who prefer hardware to software, and once done hacking it all to hell, got bored and quit the whole mess and the entire job hunt...)
Pity indeed, but at least I'm free of the corporate bulls*** now.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I doubt you have been watching too much CNN, because they are reporting just the opposite of what you said. There is a list (see link) at cnn.com of the top 10 jobs in America. What's #1? Software Engineer! Not only is the average salery over 80k, the projected 10 year growth is 46%! It is also listed as relatively low stress and flexible. Who could ask for anything more?
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/
I'm an IT director at a corporation with an IT staff of ~20 people. Our IT budget is fairly small - we typically have funds for 1-3 decent sized projects per year. But, like most companies our size, we do not have the full-time staff to continue maintenance on our existing systems AND run a dedicated project team to implement a new system. We bring in an implementation partner to staff the new projects - and members of our full-time staff generally act as the project manager and as part-time technical members of the team. The dedicated project team is primarily contractors. I worked for a while as a contractor when I was younger - and as many here can testify, it is not an easy life, and not for everyone. Traveling from customer to customer all over the country, staying in one place for only a few months at a time - and always having the threat of lay-off over your head if you don't find a spot on the next project. What's the problem? There are many. The full-time staff doesn't really get involved enough in the new system implementation - they are too busy with maintenance. Tight budgets make us push the schedules too hard - because we want the high-priced contractors gone as soon as possible. The contractors aren't in-house long enough to really refine the solution to match our business processes - they try to slam it in, get paid and move on - leaving us to clean-up the messes and deal with business users who are disappointed with 80% solutions. The real-world of corporate IT is an ugly place - full of long hours & weekends, clueless corporate execs and $500K software packages that won't even install unless you spend a thousand manhours patching and tweaking code. Schools don't teach this stuff - they show you a few theories for building data models and writing compilers and send you on your way. I'm not saying a degree is worthless - on the contrary, the discipline required to complete a university program is extremely valuable and I won't hire non-degreed script kiddies. It's just that IMO the university curriculum is completely unrelated to the world of corporate IT. One of my university professors told me something that has stuck with me for 20 years: Technical people are complete idiots. We believe we have a Holy Calling to be techies, and we like being techies so much that we would do the work even if we didn't get paid. Lawyers and accountants get paid so much because they charge you just to have a talk with them. If techies did the same thing we would all be making millions of dollars!
Become a lawyer. Then find some IT people, sue them and take their stuff. Then you'll have all the rewards of working in IT, without the hassle And those poor suckers who went into IT will be working for you!
http://junglevision.com -- Shamus for Gameboy
Programming jobs may become harder to find in large corporations. However, smaller companies will usually hire locally. That probably won't change much. As for the large scale off-shore dev, it's heavy underway now and you have to have xp and be pretty good to make it as a pure dev in a large scale environment. Thankfully, one way or another, dev management in large environments will always learn that -you get what you pay for-
Quite Insightful. That's what I get for mentioning that I am (or soon to be was) in the Army. I only wish I had chosen the 25B MOS (Computer Systems Analyst) instead of my chosen MOS (13F). Then I would have been able to get my certs through the Army too.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I have worked on a number of software projects and the kind of projects that end up being real success stories usually have very tightly knit client/developer contact. Many of our projects (I work for a firm that writes custom web and windows applications on the small to medium scale) have weekly client meetings, initial face to face introductions, and after-deployment training and handshaking. Its cheaper by the hour, but the end/net result of using outsourced labor for programming ends up being a wash, or even worse, cheaper for using American Labor.
Preach it brother!
I have been on projects where the users and development team are in the same building and requirements STILL get misinterpreted and change requests still pile up. If we can't even get it right when we are all talking face-to-face, I can't imagine the carnage when you add distance, cultural differences, languages differences to the mix. Personally, I think it is a clusterf*ck waiting to happen.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
The way things are going the best way to make money is to borrow money and invest it in assets that are robust in a third world economy, which is where the US is heading.
Seastead this.
The guy is a loser. Really. Always negative.
I started out with a degree in compsci working for 12K a year and doing grunt work. Worked 60 hour weeks.
Its 25 years later and I'm in charge of the technology for a fortune 1000 sized firm, I make $150K and I work 45 hour weeks.
Life sucks when you get out of college for 2 or 3 years. Big deal. If you're not willing to struggle a little bit, then you deserve to flipping burgers. Like this guy.
Final piece of advice. Don't get "certified" in anything if you want to do anything more than be a sysadmin. Get your B.S. in compsci/ims from a big-time university (doesn't matter which), work hard, develop a way to communicate like a professional, and you'll be at six figures within 10 years.
Or you can whine about the reason you have a sucky job is because you have "ethics". It's too bad this little whiner won't get taken out by some virulent disease, because I know he's making me sick to my stomach. Little puke.
as long as the vast majority of people working in an office are completly clueless when it comes to the computers they use.
We must remember that the IT industry in this country is moving forward, not backward, upward not sideways, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards project management.
The ______ Agenda
Do or do not, there is no try.
Compare and contrast: the state of the television animation industry before and after "overseas" became a common word; the state of the IT industry before and after "outsourcing" became a common word.
There's a lot more cartoons on the tube, but not many more jobs in the States involved in making them.
egypt urnash minimal art.
If you're working for the good of a client you care about, you'll make great stuff. If you're working just for your boss up the hall, you'll do work in proportion to how often he comes and complains to you.
If you're doing work for your outsourcing company for a remote client's client more than 7,000 miles away, you have as little personally invested in the success of that project as possible. You're going to produce whatever crap keeps you the job, in direct proportion to how much the complaining of the remote client's client actually makes it back to your ears. Translated, of course.
You never get good work unless the people doing the work have some stake in its success. Farming that out overseas is not a route to getting production-level code. It can be done, but it is neither cheap nor easy.
The ______ Agenda
The trick to beating the outsourcers :
1) Get the BS in CS degree. Don't be tempted by one of the watered down BA in CS or "Information Science" degrees that don't actually teach you anything about how computers actually work. Even if whoever's doing the hiring doesn't initially know the difference between the degrees, your lack of specific knowledge will speak for itself.
2) Get a job working on something new. When you're seeking a job, take a really close look at what the company does, what it wants to do, and what you'll be working on. Don't get stuck working on the 1,000th implementation of a generic timesheet software or something, unless the company is wanting to put a seriously new spin on it and do something unique. Why? Because these problems have already been solved. Outsourcers, contractors, 3rd party providers of all stripes derive their bread-and-butter by providing "commodity code." Say you're some sort of 3rd party provider. You've already written one instance a timesheet software. How hard is it to re-purpose that code for a new client who wants basically the same thing? Make sure that the company you're interviewing with wants to do something new, or at least is interested in new ideas. Bonus points to companies trying to solve problems that either (A) haven't already been solved, (B) haven't already been solved *well* or (C) aren't easily solved by re-purposing some sort of standard pre-written code.
3) Keep your skills up to date. This could mean learning new languages, new versions of existing languages, or new APIs. It may even mean moving from a programming position to an architect/designer/manager position. Remember, the closer you are to the money, the more secure your job really is.
4) Don't be scared.
(A) There's already a lot of backlash against outsourcing, and the People With the Money are already beginning to see the difference between having someone they can pull into meetings and someone who lives half the world away.
(B) The internet will get bigger. Currently, only 20-30% of the US has broadband. Imagine what the market will look like for experienced web developers once this number looks more like 50%, or even 70-80% like what they have in S. Korea.
(C) Lots of industries are still on paper. Hard to believe in this day and age, but its true. Even businesses that are computerized often are only so in the most trivial sense, and will need their systems re-built to take advantage of networking and business-to-business integration. Even among businesses that are already fully computerized, they still need their systems upgraded to take advantage of new technologies. Granted, some of these companies will only need the most generic sort of commodity code, but there are plenty that face problems which haven't been sufficiently solved yet.
In other words, to quote Tom Petty, "the future is wide open."
Work hard, keep your skills up to date, contribute sold value to your employer and you'll do fine. I was convinced of that right up to the moment I got laid off.
[Insert pithy quote here]
As an Indian, I'm quite sure that India is running up against a labour supply wall in the next few years, just like China is starting to. That is to say, current Indian IT professionals taking outsourced jobs represent a cream of the Indian crop -- a small tiny fraction of the population who are running out. The wider Indian educational system beyond the elite institutions is so dilapidated and woefully inadequate in comparison to the elite institutions, that there is no way that it can churn out a comparable level of quality and quantity in skilled personnel. This means that India is running out of skilled people to help satisfy the developed world's hunger for cheap skilled labour. There is currently a ferocious spiral of wage inflation in India right now among skilled sectors. All you have to do is wait for demand to catch upto the dwindling supply, and the path will be unclogged for you once again, as it previously was.
currently 6 or 7 krona get you 10 dollars
You're off by a factor of 10. 1 USD = approximately 7.5 Swedish kroner (today).
-- http://frobnosticate.com
I should know, I've done it, pays better than most IT jobs :)
... (drumroll) you still get to be knee deep in shit all day while at work... ;-)
And
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I agree with other posts that first and foremost you should choose something you enjoy doing. Poor and happy is better than rich and miserable.
Once you've cleared that criterion, I think there is always a lucrative niche for technical people that have language skills (e.g. Chinese, not Perl) and are willing to work in the global economy. I'm an engineer, I have three languages, and have worked as an expat for companies in three countries.
There are thousands of MBAs who speak Chinese. There are vastly fewer people who have technical ability and can function overseas. Do a couple of years locally polishing your tech skillz, then you can go abroad as a project manager. Do a good job and soon you will be asked to decide whether to stay in a tech track or continue upward in management. Even companies that outsource need competent people who can run the show.
My recommendation: If you enjoy CompSci, then go CompSci major and Chinese or Japanese minor. How to choose Chinese vs Japanese? Trying firing up your favorite ethnic pr()n sites and see what tickles your fancy. Remember, do what you enjoy... :->
I and a few friends are overloaded with customers and work (and good rates) tuning/optimizing other people's crappy work. I am consistently amazed that customers pay bottom dollar for the initial design and development work, and then up paying more later to make the application/database scalable. It keeps me employed and wealthy though...
What, you want something more? Okay, only go into software development (I assume you want to do that instead of being a sysadmin -- both are IT) if you really, really enjoy it.
You still want more? Okay, if you're going to do software development, it's going to be nothing like what you learned in school unless you take a "Software Engineering" course where they do requirements, analysis, high-level design, low-level design, coding, unit testing, integration testing, system testing, acceptance testing, etc. That's what it's really like.
Unless you get into one of those start-ups where it's, "OMIGODOMIGODOMIGODWHYARENTYOUCODING!!!!" 24/7.
Here's something else: get a MBA right after your CS degree, and then you can be the one that outsources software development, until you figure out that it costs roughly the same, all told, once you get back your first pile of crap and then have it re-done.
Too much for you? Okay, we'll go back to the simple answer: Don't do it.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
But all of these candidates believed themselves to be worth hiring and competent enough to be the sole IT resource for the company. Maybe they're lying to me or themselves- dunno. But I hope all of them have plans for a 2nd career when the economy goes south.
We've also found 3 really good people whom we gave offer letters to. Two of them chose other companies for various reasons, and the other got a counter offer from his current employer and decided not to leave. Point is that good people get multiple offers and their current companies value them enough to make an effort to keep them. People who aren't that good, get passed up. If you tell your boss you're quitting and he/she doesn't try to keep you, that should be a warning sign that you are expendable and not valuable enough to keep should the need to reduce headcount arise.
Not everyone who likes technology is cut out to do IT. It requires the ability to learn both by reading and experiance, strong troubleshooting skills, an outgoing personality and a willingness to occasionally work strange hours and under emense stress. Very few people are talented enough to pull off the BOFH in todays competitive landscape. In my experiance, people who are in IT because they love it have a significantly higher success rate then people who are in it for the money. Unfortunately, just loving technology/IT isn't enough to be really good- just like my love for riding motorcycles doesn't make me good enough to race competitively.
If you've really got what it takes, then IT can be a really rewarding career. But if you don't, you'll find it very fustrating and in economic downturns very difficult to find a job should your current employer experiance financial difficulties or look to save money by outsourcing. Of course, if anyone reading this is interested and qualified to be the sole IT resource for a small security startup in Sunnyvale, CA, check out our website.
Good luck.
The first person that Ive stumbled across addressing these problems and offering insight is Dan Pink
His current book 'A WHOLE NEW MIND' leads me to believe he he really understands the issues at hand here and (unlike most others) is willing to go out on a limb and offer what I think to be some pretty interesting solutions .
Here an excerpt that explains the basics of his idea.
If nothing else this book has gotten me thinking in some directions that i would have otherwise missed - oh yeah and it's available in paperback.Get your tagline off my lawn.
You forgot that so called "morals" and "save us from terrorism" trumped economic concerns in the last election, and the idiot was re-elected.
That's why I'm in Atlanta now and not still up in the Twin Cities. I had a lot of experience in various technical areas, but the fact that I had concentrated in the airline industry killed me for a number of positions where they wanted industy-specific experience as a hard requirement.
That makes no sense from our perspective as employees (most application concepts tend to cross lines of business) and probably not from the hiring manager's perspective, either, but it isn't usually the hiring manager who is making the rules.
I know someone down here who received a job offer from a company (formal offer letter and everything), but who is now waiting in limbo because HR apparently decided that not enough people had been interviewd for the position. This is after the hiring folks made an offer!! What's with that...???
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
How many jobs are being created in IT?
Where does the pay equilibriate?
How does this compare with the cost of reproduction given the lack of familial cohesion in the West and the high familial cohesion in Asia?
Finally, are Asians known for engaging in less ethnic nepotism than US citizen?
Seastead this.
While I'm sure your rationale for avoiding US engineers is working for you now, it reminded me of a Doonesbury cartoon from 1991. Which of these characters best fits your position .....?
CEO: [spells out the corporate advantages of laying off their development staff, bringing them back as on-call consultants.]
VP: "Sounds like a good deal for us."
CEO: "What do you mean, 'us'?"
Luke, help me take this mask off
Same post, with paragraphs ... I have not posted here much and failed to realize that this post required HTML tags to seperate things, an unusual lack of attention to detail for me ;)
.. Best reference I could ever hope for there.
Ok, my case is a little bit different, but I've been reading this blog with great interest. I am looking at going into a networking IT field.. I get out of the military in December and I am moving to Austin, TX in January to begin my new life.. I have been in the military for the last *9* years and joined straight out of high school, so to say that I'm a bit nervous about it is the understatement of the year.
I have been assigned to submarines for 7 1/2 years of my service, not exactly the greatest place to try and work on college courses, so I really do not have any college education and I'm not sure that I see going full time student is going to be possible as I do have mouths to feed.
I have been working with computers since I was a kid, I actually did work for a couple internet providers starting when in 94 (I was 15 years old).
I have had Certifications in NT (never finished MCSE), plan on getting some updated ones very soon. NT Certs are no longer recognized.
Did my CCNA few years back, also expired, getting that back up to date within the next couple months.
I had a business license with a friend for a couple of years while in the military, we had one customer, 6 H&R Block locations, we were responsible for giving the owner of those stores his first year that he did not have any downtime during tax season (he was used to over a week per store per season)
My experience:
9 years working with IT in the Navy (I'm a missile tech, so IT is not my primary duty, however I was the only lan administrator on my last boat for about 4 years)
2 years working with H&R Block
I have worked with DOS, Windows NT / 2000 / XP / 2003, MS Exchange, HP-UX, Linux, Novell 3.12, Cisco equipment, have some HTML and SQL (mySQL) experience as well.
I will have my CCNA again when I get out, possibly my MCSE (will have atleast a portion of it done).
I'm really good with this stuff, I can troubleshoot anything, seems as though I can always figure out whatever is wrong in a short period of time even if it is something I have never seen or heard of. I'm an incredibly hard worker that loves this field and will do whatever it takes to succeed at it. I am lacking the whole collage education, I can only hope that this doesn't hurt me to much.
Basicly, I would like to hear it, straight from all of you, how do you honestly think I will do in Austin? Am I heading for trouble? should I focus on anything specific?
Nate
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
the code gets better. The code I've seen come from foreign conglomorates, thus far, has been... Not just bad. Not just horrible. Downright... unacceptable. It's honestly a miracle that some of it does what it's supposed to do at all... and some of it looks like it does, but doesn't. Hopefully that's not every foreign coding conglomorate...
Either way, I agree 100% with everyone on here who said, "be rooly good at what you do, there will always be a market," and anyone who may have said, "always keep in mind this option: BE YOUR OWN BOSS!" BYOB is always good.
expletives welcomed
I'll agree, most educated Indians are conversant in English. However, to be comfortable, conversational Hindi and/or Kannada (for Bangalore) or Telugu (for Hyderabad) would be a major plus.
Luke, help me take this mask off
It may be improving. But it's most likely not improving by as much as the government claims it is. Of course, they have the incentive to make such claims, as it helps keep the current administration and its party in greater power. Even though Dubya is on his way out in 2009, they will still be trying to make it look like good things happened on his watch, whether or not he was even responsible for the bad things that actually happened (some of it was Congress's fault).
Additionally, the government also has the means to get bad statistics. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses methods to just people as being employed, unemployed, or not in the work force that unfairly misclassifies many people. A computer programmer or network administrator who is currently delivering pizza part time is counted as employed, making things look rosier than they really are. There is no category for "mis-employed" or "under-employed" (but there needs to be). Another source of error is that people are considered not looking for a job if there are no jobs even being offered in their area that they could apply for. If you're one of those who gets surveyed by the BLS and you say you are checking newspaper ads and job postings, but have not found any to send a resume to, or don't have any interviews to go to, and this is all you've done for 4 weeks, you are counted as "not in the work force", not as unemployed (and this helps lower the unemployement rate).
For more information, see "How the Government Measures Unemployment".
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You may as well go for the career you really want and will be best at, because outsourcing comes to every job.
Think that a job in the food services industry wearing a polyester uniform and paper hat will save you? It won't save everyone. Next time you're in the drive-thru lane at McTacoShack(tm) yelling at the squawk box, realize that the person you're talking to doesn't have to be in the same 'Shack where your pizza is being deep-fried. Many chains already take orders at centralized locations that handle thousands of franchise operations--modern telecommunications technology makes distance irrelevant to the transmission of unintelligible speech.
I don't know if any are off-shore yet, but they will be.
So what would you rather be, an outsourced computer programmer who has can start up his own business, or an outsourced order-taker trying to find someone to pay for your skill at misunderstanding garbled speech?
The jobs here in the USA are still not anywhere near 1997 levels. Postings on the big jobs boards in technology are still just a fraction (about 1/7th right now, which is better than a year ago which was about 1/12th) of what it was around 1996 and 1997 in the "dot com" age just a couple years before it all went "dot comatose". I do find it hard to believe it can ever get as good as it was, but maybe it can get adequate if there isn't the same flood of people into the field that took place during those years and some that followed. So if you love the field, go for it. If not, stay away; there are no (not any more) riches here.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I am 24 and spent several years in IT working for a major multinational bank. More and more of the jobs there were getting outsourced to India - though I am not sure you could call it outsourcing since they had a presence there so it was more just moving the responsibility to that country/division. I thought long and hard about it and decided to go back to school for Education - one of the few jobs that you can be assured lifetime employement in an industry that will still be around in much the same form for the rest of my career and that can't be outsourced. The hours are good, the pay is improving, the time off is great and it is stable - all things you can't say to nearly the same extent for IT.
A few things became very clear to me. First, that most of the end-user relation / helpdesk jobs for firms of any size will be outsorced to a third-party company whether they make use of offshoring or not. Those that are left will not be very highly paid. Second, to compete with the likes of Linux and open-source software the commercial software vendors will make their software easier to set up and manage, almost to the sense of self-managing in many cases, and what set up and management they require will be provided by the hardware vendor bundled with the purchase. For example, the likes of IBM, HP, Dell and Sun will come into an organization and set up the hardware and the software as they metamorphize into solution providers instead of hardware providers. There will be jobs working for them in such a situation but I have a feeling there will be many more qualified IT people around than there will be such jobs. I can certainly imagine a Microsoft ad campaign to management for Sever 2010 that goes "Upgrade to Microsoft Server 2010 and you will need 1/2 of the IT staff" and so forth - it will be their way of convincing buisiness to shell out money for the next big upgrade and it will be a damn effective one as it will pay for itself.
All in all, it makes total sense that the software will get smarter to justify the cost and that these solution providers will be able to do much of the current IT work more cheaply than an in-house staff for most organizations in the future. It is definetly not a career that I could be sure I would still have a well-paying and stable job in for the next 40-50 years and so I needed to find something that I could be sure of that while I still could. I would suggest you do the same...
Want to hire me? 10 years of (professional) C++, over 15 years total, similar for SQL, 80x86 Assembler, highly familiar with the mathematic theories behind various applications, from compression to cryptography (and of course their implementation), able to adapt quickly, very capable of maintaining and extending foreign code, etc.
The catch? No degree. Back when I studied, my country only offered "master or nothing". So I do have the equivalent of a bac, but no papers to show it. And, of course, no green card.
The problem isn't so much that there are no good people. The problem is that not all of them have a sheet of paper telling you "objectively" that they're good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...become a patent lawyer.
-Glee
Many a true word hath been spoken in jest -- mod funny posts "Informative".
I have been looking into outsourcing to other country's just for the heck of it and unless you have a really big company with offices already in one of those countries (like Microsoft, IBM and some others might pull it off), the cost is fabulous. The prices charged for those services are the same or more as if you would pay a programmer full time. If you do it yourself in a company, you have to get one or more managers on both sides of the channel that DO speak English and know the company. The cost of moving your managers constantly and paying those extra managers quickly get up to the cost where you could pay some local programmers. Next to that your program is written without any comments or comments that nobody understands, so changing anything is going to get difficult. Outsourcing your helpdesk is just bad for customers (anyone ever called to the helpdesk of Ensim knows what I mean) The only problem I could think of is that your local programmers are connected to a union and thus refuse to work since you can't fire them (for example those guys at Verizon). I also see in the neighbourhood that there is a shortage of good IT personnel. I am freelancing now and I am buried in work (I could earn close to 10k/month if I wanted to); I have other requests from multiple companies to be a full time systems administrator since no-one around seems to have any clue about Linux/Unix/Mac and that can integrate with Windows too. What the heck is so difficult about learning any *nix system or how to integrate/migrate from Windows (this is in really in high demand right now).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Thanks for re-formatting. It made it a lot more readable.
I'm in Seattle so I can't speak to the job market in Austin. However I can offer you some free generic advice which is probably worth what you're paying for it.
It sounds like you have a good set of skills. Your references, and the military experience will count for a lot. Unfortunately, a lot of people will claim to have the same skills. They may not actually able to perform at your level, but you are competing with them to get the interviews. You'll need something to distinguish your resume from the posers. I would spend the money and get your certifications current. However, I would not spend any money on training courses. Spend the money on some certification books, and three or four computers to set up your own admin lab. The computers don't have to be current, even two or three years old should be good enough. The certifications won't impress the technical people interviewing you. Their function is to refresh your knowledge, and most importantly, get you past the "buzz-word bingo" in the HR department. The tech folks will be more impressed when you tell them you keep an elaborate home lab to experiment with.
Do you have a current security clearance? Obviously that would give you a huge advantage with defense contractors.
The tech job market currently seems to be improving, but the long term problem you are facing is that sys and network admins are in the same position now that machinists were a decade or so ago. Companies hire when then economy is growing, and lay off when the economy is stagnant or shrinking. It just isn't as stable as it was in the 70s, and 80s, even though there are more positions.
You don't mention wanting to be a programmer, so I wouldn't suggest gettting a B.S. in C.S. Instead, I'd try getting cross-trained in some non-computer field: accounting, medical practice managment, real estate development. You'll be a lot more useful to a small-business if you aren't just the computer/network guy, but really understand their operation. Some of those fields you could pick up in the evenings from a community college. If you are really ambitous you could think about getting and MIS or business degree and going into managment.
That said, there are lots of great opportunities for developers in North America, as long as you think about how to differentiate yourself from an average cubicle-based, head-down code jockey. One way is to develop an outstanding professional reputation as a developer, perhaps through a visible role on a popular open source project. That recognition can sustain a successful consulting business.
Another way is to use your technical skills in a customer-facing role, perhaps as a system engineer at a software or system vendor, providing onsite support and custom development for a customer. That role requires good communication skills and an upgraded wardrobe, but can't easily be replicated by someone halfway around the world. The downside of this role is that you don't get to contribute to a product and you may find yourself in a product niche. But companies always need technical people who can talk to customers and prospective customers.
A third way is to envision a career path leading to become a senior engineering manager or a CTO. You can start as a developer with the full expectation that your code-writing days may be limited. Accordingly, you begin to network with managers to learn more about their work (and let them know of your interest in a management role), and take some management and/or business-related courses. Make an effort to understand how your current and envisioned future positions fit into your company's business strategy, since that can help you pick the projects on which to work. Speak up in meetings, volunteer to be the techie in your company's trade show booth, and generally make yourself visible as someone looking for more responsibility. Be prepared to leave your current position if that responsibility isn't forthcoming.
The US has become one of the most expensive countries for employers, not just because of relative salaries, but also because of health insurance costs, litigation, and regulatory costs. As a result, if a job can be done effectively elsewhere, it is either already there or likely to migrate there soon. This is true not just for software development, but also for lots of other "white collar" jobs. Of course, most of the manufacturing jobs are already long gone. But that's a whole other discussion.
Computer Science is a great major and has very practical applications. However, I personally would suggest also to cultivate interests in the related applied math subjects such as operations research, financial modeling, statistics, etc while you're in school. The more diverse your interests are, the more resilent you will be to ups and downs in a particular industry.
Don't make any projections on what the job market will look like 5 years from now (because you can't). Also don't believe all the whinning about outsourcing. The United States has the world's best universities, researchers, students, and companies in the technology related subjects. Think beyond being a plain coder. Think of being on the edge of your field. Then outsourcing will not be a big threat.
Once you make the decision to get into CS, try to get into the best CS program that you can afford to attend and be admitted to. The reputation of a university does matter when applying for the top jobs because the reputation is usually closely linked to the quality of education (but it is only a part of the equation for getting a job, of course).
Hmm, what do you hire for? I live in NY and I am looking for a job in network support/design out that way. I have no degree (was CS major though), a stack of certs that are worth nothing, and about 6 years of experience.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
"The real problem is that they don't have any real world skills. "
...to paraphrase the old routine, you only get to choose two.
Why the hell are you interviewing recent graduates?
You want:
a) cheap
b) educated
c) experienced
If I were you, from where I am standing, I would go into Pure Physics as an academic subject. That branch of science is about to be turned completely upside down and almost everything in the text books will be re-written. Look at the new industries associated with the race to commercialise space. Get work at a commercial space port or a university associated with such. If you are going to continue to work in software, then stick to emulating the new technologies that will stem from the new research areas in Pure Physics or the new commercial space industry. Enjoy!
It is just a convenient scapegoat for the general flutuations in the economy. The vast majority of programming jobs require close communication with the client, and these jobs won't be affected.
If, however, your dream is to be the kind of programmer who gets handed a written specdification, sits isolated in his basement in front of his computer with lots of pizza and code for a few weeks, and hand back a finished program, then your dream is in serious danger.
I can tell you that kind of programming gets boring fast.
If you instead can think of yourself as a part of team with a special competance in programming, you will do fine.
It's unlikely that learning a new language will help any Americans keep their jobs. The main thing that gets outsourced is software development, but America is sabotaging itself when it comes to software.
The fact that certain other parts of the world do not have software patents means that those areas of the world will be able to thrive and innovate in the field of software development, while America struggles to have any meaningful development being done aside from the "big companies", who will hold a monopoly on software development in the US.
From a US perspective, the future of software development is effectively going to be a small number of US companies with a monopoly (through cross-licensing with each other) on software development in the US, versus a huge number of companies competing and innovating overseas in countries that do not have software patents.
If you're in the US and you're a programmer who isn't working for one of the biggest companies, don't count on keeping your job for more than another 5 or 10 years. The smart thing to do right now is find something else (not software development related) you can do, or be prepared to move overseas for a software development job.
I agree with parent, it *does* matter that you like what you do. But if you do or you don't, you will undoubtedly change careers at some point. I can't back this up with a reference, but I believe that on average, a person stays in one career (that's career, not job) for only seven years. My advice is to get in there, see how it fits and get some job experience. Oh, and about wether you will get a job .. I personally believe it comes down to personality. Coding may get outsourced to India, but creating and maintaining relationships with your clients won't.
"Dewey, you fool: Your decimal system has played right into my hands!"
Mod this up. It couldn't be more true.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I will pass you the very, very boring details about the economics behind it all but here's a couple of points you may find interesting that I garnered during my *exciting* academic career studying the economics of the software industry:
- Yes, jobs are moving abroad. But most of the time they are what are known as "low value-added" jobs - not the leading edge, cool, revolutionary new programming but the mundane old stuff such as debugging, maintenance, hotlining (gasp), etc... A lot of what is done abroad is actually adapting American or European programs to local languages.
- High value-added jobs will probably still be found in the states for a few years to come. Why is this? Well as mentioned above, the training you will receive in the US will always carry some kudos (here or abroad) because of the US's reputation as a technology leader. Secondly, knowledge in IT tends to be geographically concentrated (see Route 128, SV, etc). This is in large part due to the *nature of knowledge*. I'll pass you the boring theory but basically, interaction with your peers, frequently possible in such an environment as SV, has been found to be very important in learning about new techniques, languages, etc. Also as there is a concentration of skilled labourers in those areas, firms keep wanting to settle there (self-reinforcing geographic concentration)
- Excellent coders will always find work. All right, you may have to compromise and be willing to move abroad if required. But if you're good at what you do, keep up to date with the latest languages etc, you will always find work.
- IT is everywhere. Even if you do not end up working in the industry per se, ALL industries use computers, and there are a lot of possibilities in that. Take for example the bio-technology industry: there is a shortage of biologists who know how to code, so a lot of their bioinformatics development is done by IT graduates.
Now my advice to you, young grasshopper: go into IT if you really want to. Believe me, unless you love it, the many many years at college as well as the hours devoted in your spare time learning new languages and garnering experience on your own projects etc, will be pointless: you'll end up not liking your job, and chances are you won't be very good at it (there is a strong element of passion required, I believe, to be the best at your job). If you want money, go into consulting, bio-technology, or run for Congress.
If this is what you really want to do, my tips would be:
- Start learning now: there is no substitute for experience. You can already pick up the basics - it will make college easier anyway
- Keep up to date. Languages evolve, and it's always worth keeping up to date with what is relevant in the marketplace nowadays
- Open Source software is an excellent opportunity to learn (if not only by looking at code other have written and seeing how stuff works, but also by adding your own bits and getting feedback on your work). Your contributions also work as a signal to the marketplace: when writing your CV you can add that you contributed to X/Y/Z project, and your potential employer can actually track down what you wrote and be astounded by how wonderful you are, decide to hire you on the shot, and give you a billion dollars (well maybe not the last part)
- And just to be safe, learn mandarin...
Here is my viewpoint on the issue... I graduated in May 2004 with a BS in Computer Science from Florida Institute of Technology. Straight out of college, I was hired on by a local, small VoIP company. I worked there for about ten months before being laid off. My pay was low. I received about 30K a year. I had no experience. Fortunately, I am also an Officer in the national guard. Given the fact that I had a security clearance, I was able to land a subcontractor job as a software tester for one the US Government's new mission planning software. I don't like software testing at all, but I have a family and need money. I still make less than the average on CNN's website. Here's the bottom line: Everyone will not be a millionaire. The industry is in flux and I can guarantee you that you may have to move every few years. Yes, there are jobs out there. They may not be within 15 miles of you. I drive 100 miles roundtrip daily to my job because I could not get into a job locally. That is just how it is. Yes, you must love the job you do, but when it comes down to putting food on the table versus job satisfaction, I'll take the former. If you do Government work, you are mostly safe from outsourcing. Most projects are NOFORN or FOUO even classified, so they cannot be outsourced. You may have to bite the bullet to gain experience. We all had to do it. Remember: We weren't all Senior C# developers first. My two cents...
I also agree that you have an excellent skill set, and if there were a technical position available where I am, you would definitely get an interview. Also, since I didn't end up working for a defense contractor, my clearance wasn't an asset--but given the trend (which the IT press doth protest too much in denying) towards outsourcing, a job requiring a clearance is worth considering. My understanding is that a military clearance doesn't automatically translate into a civilian one, but a SECRET based on an ENTNAC or a TS based on a BI/SBI plus PRP certainly can't make their work any harder--they know you've been in a sensitive position.
Good luck, and know that there definitely is life after the Navy!
Once you hit the 5-7 year mark, the most you can hope for(unless you have a US security clearance) is about $95,000 no matter how much better you are than your college. Many companies pay much less than that for senior level people. This has been steady since about 2000. Google supposedly pays up to $150,000 however, that is one company and that is probably for a PhD, not a normal IT worker. IT salaries for managers are holding steady too. The only way to really go up in salary is to make it to the VP level, but only a very small percentage of people make it that high. I have seen a small number of temp jobs(6 months or so ) that pay $65-90/hour. There are very few of these, so even if you are the best of the best you typically cannot stay employed at this level for ever, unless you are willing to travel around the country at your own expense and live out of a suitcase. No one is starving, but it is frustrating since the very best people making the max salary are typically MUCH better than the average person making that much. So all you end up with is more work. The first and second level managers don't make that much more, they just work alot more hours. It's not until 3 levels of management above you where the wages really go up. I don't think it's a good sign when the top salaries are capped like this. Even classified jobs cap around $120,000/year. This is true for classified jobs that take 6-8 months to fill. They won't raise the salaries to attract someone sooner. Yes it's quite a bit of money. However, people who work in finance who are equally as technical can make $300,000/year or more. They get paid more for performance. I believe this cap in salaries is the main reason why so many people are completely incompetent in software development and database administration. Once you hit the max salary there is no incentive to make yourself better even though there is still alot of room to grow. There is a huge different between the typical 'senior' person and the truly senior person. It's like the Different between Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley. Both made the All-star team one year in the 1990s. This can get rather frustrating for those of us who are in the elite category, because others who make the same amount of money tend to get in the way.
Speaking as someone who has done defense contracting, I can say some of the most interesting work is in the government contracting sector. You will typically get into much bigger and longer term projects. Most private sector projects are smaller Yes there are exceptions such as people working on the new version of Windows or the new version of the Oracle database. Those projects probably have a 1000 people on then(between all the groups). It's not just the defense sector. All the public sectors have interesting projects.
One word of warning. Try to avoid being onsite with government employers. They are difficult to work with, have life time employment, and never work 5 minutes of over time. Try to be in a shop offsite.
I have found that on the most part hours are more reasonable doing government work then private sector work. Yes you sometimes have to work late and weekends, but private companies can kill you with hours. There are some government contracts that have long hours. These are typically smaller companies that got the contract by underbidding opponents.
It seems to me that true professionals will never be as good as useless buggers at job interviews, simply because they'll prove to be so useful that companies don't want to let go of 'em.
I know that's been my experience; The job search is long and difficult and demoralizing, but after it's done, the work lasts because the supervisors are happy.
It's been a long time.
The only people that really value Devry and ITT grads are the companies telling you that. I would rather have a smart kid who went to a more affordable state school. They get more theory. The advantage of a good CS program over these private programs is that the public schools don't care if you fail. This forces you to work harder. Devry and ITT can't fail that many people because it costs them money.
Most programmers are incompetent. It's across the board.
Like many here, I got laid off from my job at a large-cap corp. Damn near all of us got the pink slip.
I noted several of the younger guys abandoned the years of IT training and security clearances they had and went into construction. I saw that in about four years, I don't think a one of them failed to become a millionaire... not only that, they now get to deduct their toys and expenses against their taxes.
My own feeling is if IT is what you really WANT to do, just as electronic design is what I WANT to do ( its what I am gonna do even if I do NOT get paid, aka "hobby" ), then go for it.
If you have family support obligations, you may wanna consider something not so easily outsourced and not so "commoditized" as IT.
When so many people have the same training as you do, you become just about as valuable to your employer as a quarter-inch commodity machine bolt. If you have the slightest defect, its just too easy to discard you and get another.
While this paradigm is very convenient for employers, it will make your life quite stressful.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I got laid off a few years ago along with many thousands of other mid-career IT engineers. The market where I am was flooded and my options for leaving the area continue to be severly limited due to family concerns.
In the interim period, between then and now (I run an IT department now) I drove pizza, sold cell phones, did landscaping, sold fur coats, and as much free lance work as I could convince mangers to pay for. What I learned about myself was that I really love IT work, and sysadmin work in particular.
When I got laid off, I was the lowest earner of my group of friends and I was making just a few thousand short of six figures a year. I make half that now, as do most of those same friends from three years ago. I could have re-trained myself to some other field, but when working at some nothing job to make rent, I found my conversations always going to what computer systems people had at home or at the office. I was always giving out free advice and business cards hoping for something to come out of it that would get me back to my field.
The bottom line is that if I was in it for the money I would have switched fields and never looked back. The adverts you see that say how great the job field is and how much money you will make, well those are from schools aren't they? IT is like any other field now, if you love what you do and you work hard at it you will succeed. Outsourcing is not as much of threat to your career as you are.
Being a natural programmer, I've always been amazed by how hard people try to put down
engineering skill. "Doesn't matter how good a programmer you are if you don't have great
communication and interpersonal skills". Sorry, it does matter, if your good enough at
what you do, you can show up to work naked and speak only klingon and you will get paid
obscene amounts of money.
Eccentricity and genius have always gone hand in hand, many employeers understand that.
So what if you have to hire a klingon translator? If someone is doing the work of ten
people, and doing it better (more elegant code, less bugs) than any team of ten could,
your coming out way ahead.
On the otherhand if you think your "great interpersonal and communication skills" are
going to insure your success in high tech, don't be so fast. If your going to manage
a programming team, you'd better know enough programming to do your job. What happens
when there is a coding style dispute? Do you know enough to resolve it? Worst experience
I ever had at a job was working for a manager who didn't know how to program at all,
and a team with some political problems. All the team needed was someone to make
informed decisions, it didn't happen. Only product I've ever worked on that didn't
ship.
Definitely - I work in a 100-person IT department, for a local company in western NY, and their philosophy is to get people who can learn, and KEEP THEM. There are folks here who started on the mainframe and can school me in large java web-app stuff.
It does raise the bar, but once you're in, keep learning and you'll do fine.
I am a manager with a major software company. In the last four months I have interviewed almost a hundred candiates for various positions that we have been looking to fill for some time now. There is a very strong market for true IT professionals. The dot com heydey caused a number of people who had no business in the IT profession to get high paying jobs and now those people are having a hard time finding new work. .NET, etc. when you graduate from school, you will be head and shoulders above the rest.
If you are a true IT professional, willing to work hard, passionate about what you do, and continually improve your skills, I don't think you will have a problem finding a job in the forseeable future. One of the largest problems is that a computer science degree does not prepare indiviuals for work in the IT field. So here are my recommendations.
1. Get a degree in something besudes computer science. I.e. another engineering field, with minors in finance, business, or marketing. This will give you a wider range of skills for employers and provide you flexibility if you are unable to find a job.
2. Train yourself in IT on your own. I can almost garuntee if you have certifications in Java,
3. Get real world experience. Often, 1 year of part time work can prepare you better than 4 years of classwork. This doesn't mean you don't have to have a college degree, but the point is to be better prepared than the others.
All in all, if you are not willing to put in the hard work to be an IT Professional you won't find a job. If you are willing to put in the hard work, and develop a wide range of skills, you should have the foundations for a succesful career.
If he has been watching any CNN at all, then he has been watching too much.
;-D
Ben Mickle, Matt Edwards, and Kshipra Bhawalkar looked as though they had just emerged from a minor auto wreck. The members of Duke University's computer programming team had solved only one problem in the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in San Antonio on Apr. 12. The winning team, from Saratov State University in Russia, solved six puzzles over the course of the grueling five-hour contest. Afterward, Duke coach Owen Astrachan tried to cheer up his team by pointing out that they were among ``the best of the best'' student programmers in the world. Edwards, 20, still distraught, couldn't resist a self-deprecating dig: ``We're the worst of the best of the best.'' Duke wasn't the only U.S. school to be skunked at the prestigious computing contest. Of the home teams, only Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked among the 12 highest finishers. Most top spots were seized by teams from Eastern Europe and Asia. Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests. But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen.
Complete article.
How is business? Staying in the Mars analogy, I have a modest pressure tent now so I'm no longer sitting on the surface and taking a shallow breath every twenty seconds while being hypnotized by the black spots dancing through my vision and that buzzing sound in my ears :-). To tell you the truth, I only work as hard as I need to so your results - depending on your
talent, luck and above all connections - may vary :-)
After running away from my master's estate there have since been days in my life when I've had little more than dole, there were days in my life when I was on dole and the future is still not certain (nor can it ever be). I have however seen there is an entire world outside that plantation I never even had an inkling enough to even daydream about while I was picking cotton. The way I see it, another man or woman in my situation would have maybe "easily" coped with what upsets me and remained a lifetime in the comfort of the known and largely predictable abuse. I dropped the hoe and started walking.
Learn to speak management. You'd be supprized how far 5 dollar management words will get you in an interview. Or go the self-employment route. (I did) But don't fool yourself. Take business classes along side your CSCI courses. It's not often you can sit on both sides of the desk... Management likes that. You can think like a businessman AND a computer geek?! Don't worry about the outsourcing, plenty of large american companies still hire local. (3M for instance, MS, plenty of IT jobs in manufacturing)
:)
As for the dude who posted that he has a Ph.D., stop being lazy, call google, they like your kind.
"if I weren't floating around stodgy old academic institutions"
Instead of looking at a major metropolitan area, you might do as the parent of this post does instead of what he says and find work in a college town (though not neccessarily for the college in question). I make right along the average pay for my skillset working for a private company in a college town in the southeast. I was able to buy a 3500 sq foot home on 1.3 acres of land that's only about 1/2 hour from where I work (and the same distance from a nice lake) for $120K dollars. My wife's school teacher pay combined with my own puts us a bit over six figures and we're on our way to having our house paid off in about four years and that's while putting her entire paycheck into retirement. Cost of living is a joke here compared to the major city I live closest to. Everything down to gasoline and groceries is about 15%-20% cheaper and the unemployment is one of the lowest in the country (which is pretty common in college towns). Plus, there's always a stable real estate market because the constant influx of new students picks up the slack. If I ever move and can't sell (or just don't want to), it's easy to find a property manager willing to manage it as a rental for a reasonable price.
Ever heard of lawyers been "outsourced" or replaced with H1B/L1 visa labor? Ever heard of a "down" cycle for lawyers, or lawyers salaries being driven down by outside labor forces?
If you really like engineering/computer science, get your four-year degree and head to law school. The patents/intellectual properties field pays very, VERY well and you can leave the coding to the monkeys (either here or offshore) and the management to the recently-labotomized while still earning a princely, CONSISTENT salary (WITHOUT having to deal with the IT employment "cycles").
...the trend is that IT and computer "science" jobs are going away to foreigners, and as quickly as management can pull it off. Congress is complicit, too.
For fun, look at the spelling in the responses here: "Plummer"? "Exagerate"?
*These* are the people you want to emulate?
Try something *creative*, where you can't be disintermediated (look it up).
BWilde.
- First, concern about offshoring is probably overestimated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term. In other words, over the long term concern about this is justified;
- He gives (p. 51) three questions:
What you have to do is to make sure that you are in demand and that means to continually upgrade your skills. I notice that some postings have suggested upgrading writing skills; others, languages. In fact anything like that is valuable. Take a look at your degree, and realize that your graduation date really reads "best before". The other big buzzword these days is innovation. While some people are innately more innovative than others, innovation is a skill that can be learned. There are books (Pink's among them) that can point you in the right direction.- Can someone overseas do [your job] cheaper?
- Can a computer do it faster?
- Is what I'm doing in demand
...
If the answers to #1 & #2 are yes, and to #3 no, then you are in trouble over the long haul. Friedman in The World is Flat has a similar list.As to the outsourcing and future of IT in America, the IT jobs that ARE being outsourced are the "code monkey" jobs.
The jobs that AREN'T being outsourced are IT mangers, designers, OM, etc and this is because design takes a knowledge of the business and a history. Contractors, by definition, don't have this. So, assuming the business strategy stays in the US, so will design, management, and some support.
Further, contracting companies themselves advocate a maximum of 30% on-shore, 70% off-shore mix. That having been said, many companies are trying to push that to 20%/80%. What they'll find (and many already have) is that 40%/60% is closer to the best mix.
So you're going to see companies somewhere in this experimentation cycle, but most will never surpass 20/80 and most, if not all, will quickly snap back from that.
"My prediction is that as we get out of the Bush dark ages, corrective measures will be passed to stop certain forms of offshore activity".
No, the democrats will sell us out even faster... they do that kind of thing, too, you see.
Just wait.
BWilde.
I graduated College with an English degree in 1991. There were NO JOBS for my classmates with engineering degrees, which meant that I was waiting tables. No shock there. I retrained as a computer technician in 1993 to get out of the most dead end of jobs -- file clerk. I taught myself java as it emerged and the Internet Boom happened. So I felt pretty smart. But then the CRASH happened and I had to rely on my contacts. This is what is really important to sustain a career these days. Many many people that left IT after the crash had no business doing IT. They did it because it was easy money. When the money was gone, so were they. They were mediocre co-workers as well, so that played itself out during the "networking" phase of their careers. To be honest, I've never understood people that go to college for "career training". Then again, liberal arts majors see the world a bit differently.
There are a lot of emotions, facts and fallacies brought to the surface when this topic is broached. Myself, I've been doing computer work for over 25 years and I don't have that damn piece of paper handed out to anyone with the money to complete 4 years of college. That doesn't mean I haven't gone to college, I just didn't finish it. I have 2 years of college with a double in Computer Science and Graphic Communications. Why did I leave? Because it's kind of counter productive for me to pay for college when I'm the one teaching the students and even in a couple of instances, assigning the books. I am entirely self taught. I have spent at least as much money on books and as much time reading them as any university student has spent on the education and time in class. The simple fact of the matter is this; colleges and universities in the U.S. (and probably around the world) are at the very least, 6 months behind the technology curve with professors who haven't spent actual time in the industry for many years. There are exceptions, I found one, but they are few and far between.
My best advice to anyone entering the technology field is to buy books, read and work on projects outside of work and / or school. You will learn more in 6 months doing this, than what you will learn in your entire time at college. Yes, that means you have to give up your pledging of some homo-erotic fraternity, drinking every night and playing those godforsaken MMORPGs. There is only one thing you need concern yourself about outside of the industry at this time, women, don't give up on women, they are important and in the right circumstances let you touch their fun parts. Geek womyn / grrls are especially nice because they will challenge you intellectually and will understand when you need to spend 12 hours behind the computer writing a program for work.
As far as "out sourcing" of our industry goes; it has been my experience that the people coming out of India are not as well versed in the industry as those of us who have spent time reading the books and doing projects outside of work. What we have to remember is this, if you are going to enter this industry you have to be willing to "work" outside of work, you have to be the best at what you do and be willing to either admit to what you don't know, or be willing to learn it in under 2 weeks. Part of the reason we are seeing this out sourcing of our industry is because there are way too many people out there who have entered this industry because they think that because they know how to launch FrontPage or know how to write viruses in VisualBasic that they are able to write enterprise level applications. So, companies hired them, found them to be the idiots they are and decided to go off shore where the knowledge is similar and the wages are less. If that is the way you are or you are in this industry only because of the money, GET OUT, you are the ones causing the off shoring and giving those of us who actually know the difference between pointer arithmetic and managed code a bad name. Go take a job at Burger King, finish your management degree, and get out of my industry, you don't belong, you're not needed.
Wayne E. Pfeffer
Developer with a job and have never had a problem finding one.
When I started University in '84, I figured CompSci was probably not a great career choice, because so many people were doing it, there would be a glut of graduates on the market by the time I graduated. But it was what I enjoyed.
Since then I've been through the late 90s, when you couldn't beat recruiters off with a stick, to post '01 when I worked half a dozen temp jobs just to pay the bills. And now I'm back to software development, and I'm happy.
Life is like that. Work hard, have fun, and try not to get stuck spending 24% of your life doing something that makes you miserable.
p.s. Although my degree helped me get some of the jobs I've had, 95% of what I've done, I've learned on the job.
I wish I were as sure of that as you are. People on the low end of the income scale sure seem to want the taxes on the highest 1% of earners in the US to be lower, if not nonexistent, just based on the one in four hundred thousand chance that they will end up among them.
The most hated tax in the US today is the estate tax, a tax that over 95% of the country will never even feel, and which only impacts people who are basically trying to maintain a landed gentry in the United States.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Programming can always be transfer overseas. So can call centers, data processing, etc. The only things that can't be outsourced to foreign lands are things that require a physical presence. For example my field is network engineering. You can't mount and wire networking hardware remotely. Same for systems engineering. Someone has to manually mount that server and pull bad drives out of the SAN. That would be my suggestion.
Focus on what's rare in the market, and you will have lots of success.
.NET or Java designer/architect/developer (pick your buzzword) that also understands the telecom industry or pharmaceuticals, but also has deep DBA skills in Oracle and MS SQL Server, and understands TCP/IP deeply (even maybe knows how to administer Cisco routers) is a rarity, and will be compensated handsomely. Why? Most IT failures occur because project members don't understand the business needs, or misuse the database or network, and none of the dev, dba, or network specialists really know how to deal with one another.
For example, the IT job market will always require people with insight, perspective, and an ability to clarify. I don't care if you call these people "managers", "team leads", or "architects", but I think it really just comes down to an ability or talent to map one domain (a business or industry) to technology, without force fitting technology onto the domain.
This talent is needed everywhere: IT development, IT management, infrastructure planning, in software vendor product development, consulting or contracting, etc. IT sorely lacks people with insight and perspective -- a balance of depth and breadth. They have lots of specialists that can't look up from their narrow area, they have generalists that know very little about any one thing, but are good enough with juggling personalities and strengths that they make OK managers. What we need are people that are specialists in several areas, and an ability to synthesize. -- how to apply technology to an industry, and knowing various technology specialities.
For example, a
It's not like any of these topics are particularly hard to learn -- it's just that most people tend not to mix specialities for a variety of religious reasons (developers hate DBAs and vice versa, PHP developers hate Java devs, etc.), and many people are too interested in bits & bytes , thus don't want to look at the broader world outside of technology to understand their industry deeply.
Even in a global talent pool, there will always be a need to attain and grow local talent, for simple logistical reasons (same time zone, same language, same culture ==> easier to plan).
The challenge wtih IT is that there are lots of people that don't really want to be doing this work, there are lots of people that also shouldn't be doing this work (but wound up in the industry by accident), and lots of people so ground into dust by bureaucracy or petty tyrants that they're just retired on the job. You need to have lots of passion and endurance to keep the momentum. Once again, you'll be rewarded for this attitude, because it's so damn rare.
-Stu
This is why I left New England despite loving it so much.
High taxes, horrible weather (I grew up in Buffalo, NY so I'm now sick of the snow), bad roads, expensive homes in areas where there's any work.
Now I pay no state income tax. I see no snow. I see green trees for most of the year. I don't have to deal with potholes the size of a small car. I don't have to deal with high home prices (2500-3000 sq ft places for ~250k in good areas).
The people here? They're the same people you see anywhere else... Hell, most of them moved here from somewhere else.
And yes, I stayed in the US.
When I came through the CS program at Georgia Southern back in the early 1990s, they were still using Pascal to teach programming, even though C was one of the premier languages at the time. They finally did switch to using C to teach programming, after I had already gone through the programming classes.
Traditional universities have two major problems: 1) they tie up well voer 50% of your curriculum with "liberal arts" BS that does not contribute to your technical skill sets, which is primarily what an employer is interested in. 2) They are very slow to keep up with evolving technologies.
I looked at the ITT/DeVry/AIT coursework and it looked very cutting-edge, with very little "fluff".
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You have to do what you love to do. You may or may not love IT. But whatever you love, try to abstract out the essence of what it is about that particular activity that you love. And then try to reduce it to a single sentence.
For me, it's "to create something from nothing using just my mind". Once you have the abstract statement, then you can look for the many different activities that will map to it.
For example, designing software system, creating music, writing software, writing stories, photography (still and motion) are all things that easily map to my abstract statement. Any of these activities will make me happy.
Finding this statement has taken me years. It won't happen overnight. Once you find it, you can apply it to whatever endeavor you choose.
Next, you have to look to the marketplace to find the most marketable activity that fits you statement and then try to find work doing that. If you think about it, there is no human activity that someone somewhere isn't being paid for. Some activities pay more than others and some jobs are easier to come by than others. Typically, the more fun a job is, the more people want to do it. The trick is to find your activity in an area that most people find mundane.
Good luck.
I rarely reply here however the original poster is asking for advice and you really SHOULD NOT give him this cheerleading marketing crap. The odds are stacked against startups: They suffer a disproportionate failure rate and are a horrible suggestion for those making a practical carrer shift. (Like public to private sector.) In America.it may come as a surprise to you that four out of five businesses fail within the first five years when you include sole propietorships.
Do some homework before you hand out bad slashdot advice mr. wizard.
"So you could go into engineering or if you want to be someones bitch, go into business"
Hate to break it to you when you're about to graduate but engineers are the business guys bitches. In a few years your business major friends (the ones that mostly partied during college) will be making more money than you. Be nice to them, you may need their help to keep employed down the road.
An apt metaphor, to be sure. There's a reason anarchists refer to modern employment as "wage slavery". ;)
It's one thing to trade your time and expertise for things (such as money). Humans have done this since before the beginning of recorded history. It's something else entirely to trade away control of your life (which results in us having "bosses" instead of "customers"). From now on, everyone will be my "customer".
If you read this, send me an email. I have a question for you.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
It's only a matter of time before the crap hits the fan over sending work abroad, mainly because of the security risks. Outsourcing (and outsourcing customer info) to India has resulted in a lucrative trade in Identity Theft: http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd34.htm/2 /170121.shtml
5 4.stm
0 3,00.html
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/2
And if the area of support is unstable due to war, disease, unrest, etc., you can bet your bottom dollar that productivity is going to be disrupted:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/47845
*And* how long is it going to be before governments start raising taxes to discourage this kind of backstabbing, and encourage patriotism, by employers (i.e. taxed to a level equivalent of paying local workforces at minimum wages anyway):
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,3604,11044
So, my advice is not to worry to much about the cheaper dollar payrate, and just go for it, follow your dreams! It'll all come to a head sooner rather than later, you'll see!
Honestly I'm not sure about the money, I've not been able to pay attention to that part. Yeah, basic SQL isn't worth much, but if someone can be trained so that I don't have to spend my evenings at work to make sure we make a profit, then basic SQL is what I'll take. No chance of hiring for more than that. We've talked to several consulting companies and everyone is saying the same thing: SQL developers are impossible to find right now. (Anonymous -- sadly we're unable to accomodate out-of-towners, besides which you probably wouldn't be interested in switching to a full-blown MS shop)
Even with Offshoring taking off, careers in American IT will see a steady growth. Of course, one will have to factor in "Offshoring IT Services" while planning for growth in careers.
It's worth noting that the reason that I do that is because I'm pursuing a PhD ;-) I just kind of view major metro areas as a nice runner up. Incidentally, I get to combine the two next year (kind of), in that the school that I'm doing my PhD at is in a metro area :-D
You'd be wise to choose another career.
Back in the late 1990's, I too was aware of the out-sourcing, but didn't know that it was going onto the extent that it was and is. I too posted the same question onto various forums, and was convinced by the focal, "Glass is half-full" crowd to continue into the field.
When I graduated in 2000 with a degree from a prestigious university with a degree in Software Engineering, the market had just dropped out for software developers. I was the only one from class to get a job - and I got that job because of my part-time networking experience.
Flash-forward to today - I work at a very high-level position within a Seattle-based Fortune 500 financial institution. I make great money, and really enjoy my work.
Yet, this corporation is in the middle of out-sourcing everything possible to India.
I personally out-sourced my former department to India, and had to play pretty dirty politics to survive and get into the position I have now.
If you want to always feel the pressure to keep correctly guessing the next big trend (ie, Java, Python, etc), feel the pressure from out-sourcing, feel the pressure from recent graduates, then welcome - please jump on in.
The water's fine - it's just what lurks under the surface that may get you. Or maybe, like me, you'll be the lucky one to claw your way to the surface and grab the last life-jacket.
Hate to break it to you when you're about to graduate but engineers are the business guys bitches. In a few years your business major friends (the ones that mostly partied during college) will be making more money than you. Be nice to them, you may need their help to keep employed down the road.
;)
Yeah, looks like the rookie near-graduate know-it-all is about to embark on his real education. Just don't forget to put the Vaseline in your briefcase, Junior.
Also, dont forget about: Bioinformatics, supply chain management systems, knowledge management, Internet search and social networking providers, wireless telecom, and many more industries that have great career options for tech people.
The info may be wrong but what I've heard is that if you want to get into the internet search field it's a good idea to do a minor or a second major in Library Science. I've thought of that myself for categorizing info but not neccessarily for searching.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Keeping in mind that your future may not trend exactly like the future of IT in the US, the answer to your question is highly dependant on what you envision you'll be doing with IT. I doubt the number of devices (and users) will decrease. I also doubt that technology will be so transparent no one will need IT for anything [if you are a developer, however, your aim ought to be to make everything transparent for the user and needing minimal suppport intervention.]
A hot button in hiring tends to be initial ramp-up time. Recent graduates from CS programs quite often need to learn how to program for a production environment anyway. For your first job the task is to make that calculus be in your favour. When hiring for IT my model is "What else can you do?" If you are smart, driven, creative and thoughtful about more than just programming, chances are you will be just fine.
And remember--given the length of a carrer, expect job and career changes, expect learning new architectures and paradigms within a very short time, expect to fail miserably more than once. Ensure you choose a field where all of that can be fun.
My cat ate my Gantt chart
Hi!
Sorry, but you happened to trigger one of my pet rants. People DO still make buggy whips--and they make buggies, and carts, and drays, and all sorts of horse-drawn conveyances. And they have web sites.
And since I have some knowledge of how prosperous some buggy manufacturers are, and also recruit and hire electrical and computer engineers, I'd venture to guess that the original poster was correct--if you're good at what you do, you'll succeed at whatever you do. I'd be willing to bet money that the family that owns Smucker's Harness does substantially better than your average electrical engineer.
Cheers!
John Murdoch
(Who spent the late afternoon breaking a pony to drive a carriage, and has two buggy whips on his shopping list.)
Go into entertainment or a sports.
For instance, I have a BS and MS in Computer Science. I graduated top of my class in undergrad and first in my graduate class. I've worked in the Civil and Electrical engineering fields and have what I consider to be a great job for a great company (14000+ employees) and make 90K+ with bonuses.
My wife graduated from a So California HS with decent grades. No college though she's a very bright person with lots of personality. She taught herself to be an entertainer using balloons in various sculptures, designs and decorations. She currently gets between $120 and $200 and hour and often entertains in venues for large corporate functions (for companies like mine) where she'll make 2 and 3 thousand dollars (entertaining and decorating) for a single days work. On top of this I can tell you with great certainty that she has a hell of a lot more fun at work than I do. Sets her own hours, picks her own clients and jobs, and works at will.
So much for 6 hard years of school and many long hours at work.....
"Professionals (true pros) will always find good jobs no matter where they live."
I think you should just go ahead and define a "true pro" as someone who can always find a job wherever they live. A circular argument is better than none at all.
"Have you considered having a career at McDonalds?"
We love to make fun of burger-flippers, but on the average they accomplished more on a daily basis than the average programmer did during the Internet boom.
Software development is a job for greasy rejects with the hours of a vampire and even less social life. It's a dead-end job because people who spend all their time programming computers and downloading porn have no future in commercial ventures. They have to be segregated from the functional humans. During the dot-com bubble, they had their 15 minutes, but that is long since gone, and sanity has returned. If you choose a career in software, expect a Dilbert-esque lifestyle, consisting of a sequence of death marches, punctuated by bankruptcy layoffs, reorganizations in which the new managers circle the staff like hawks looking for someone to "constructively terminate" in order to open a slot for one of their friends, and the "move to India or walk" ultimatum.
If you would like a real job, where you produce something or help someone instead of pushing buttons to make the leeches of the world fatter and the sheep ever more anemic, I suggest biomedical engineering. Who knows, you might even develop software in such a career -- but it would be useful software. Not MIS's leech-farming, or CSci's infinite regression of tools for the toolmakers.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
If what you're interested in is computer programming - go for it. Money magazine just ranked 'Software Developer' it's top job largely because of expected growth in the field.
It was "software engineering", not software development IIRC. Soft. Eng. in most companies is actually quasi-management. Again we hear "management" as the great savior of IT jobs, even if you would rather staple your tungue to your desk rather than go into management. Click Click.
Table-ized A.I.
Thing is, I still think my ear piercings are cool, and they make me happy. before the earrings I had a huge fight about shaving my head while I was working for someone (thank god head shaving is normal now!) I've tried to stay middle of the road, but I just can't. Other things I have done in office jobs before is 1) try to get away with sandals, 2) tight fitting shirts and rolled up sleeves when I was working out. Im hoping for a long shot and get employed at somewhere where they can tolerate me and my nonstandard style. I just can't do what the conservatives ask me for more than a couple months before going out of my mind! Cross training in something else besids IT is another idea. so is going freelance.
Good people are very hard to come by these days in the Valley.
... remember the bumbling idiot that made director in 1999 ... he is probably a VP somewhere now ... still a bumbling idiot.
My main theory is that the influx of mediocre talent during the dot bomb days is now considered senior level (7-10 years experience). Most individuals that are talented and know their stuff are either in super cushy jobs, or they are available as contractors north of $150 per hour.
Same goes for management
just one line... Survival of the fittest.
Beyond computers, beyond any technical field you might study, there is a meaningful universe that is worth exploring when you go to college. This is the liberal arts.
The technical fields are endless fractals of detail and mental intrigue. The technical fields are like spokes. What is that hub? The hub I call the liberal arts.
Don't sacrifice yourself completely to the "job security altar". Don't allow your college to be simply 4 years of trade school.
Don't leave college without reading Plato and discussing it, proving the pythagorean theorem, studying enough history to understand what fragile and important stuff it is, dissect an animal, do some physics and chemistry, understand and practice rhetoric, learn to play a Bach Invention, learn the awesomely difficult process of seeing and drawing a human figure.
Note that a bunch of mostly technically well educated young men were persuaded to fly suicide airplanes on September 11th 2001. These technically well educated men were unable to recognize or resist forces being applied to their minds by others.
So the liberal arts, which are taught in college, are the skills of literacy and citizenship. Valuable thing to include in your college.
Outsourcing shouldn't be an issue at all. If Americans were half as competent as their Indian counterparts and half as hard-working as their Chinese counterparts, then there would be no outsourcing of tech jobs to these countries. 1. Americans leave on the dot at 5pm - Indians and Chinese are more dedicated to their work. 2. Americans that I have encountered when I was doing my Masters in Computer Science in USA asked me if elephants are still used as transport in India. 3. Americans also asked me if we have internet in India. 4. Due to the heavy American accent, most of the americans have difficulty understanding what Indians are saying, leave alone the Chinese speaking community. Indians on the other hand have little trouble understanding a wide range of dialects. This is probably due to the higher standard of undergraduate education in India. This dumbness and WORLD=AMERICA syndrome is very prevalent among undergrads. And at the Grad level (Masters and Phd), there were NO Americans - ZERO. There were only Indians and Chinese. If you want jobs, then deserve them. Don't feel cheated if someone outperforms you. Work harder and strive to be better than the competition.
If McDonalds need a java/unix programmer (and why should not they?) then I'll seriously consider :)
Nations that do not enforce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefit will tend to race to the bottom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom
God and religion are distinct
Having been recently dismissed from a 6 year IT career in the UK I have witnessed the market shift totaly. This may just be the organisation that I worked for but I get the impression that it something that is occuring in all the major organisations, specifically those who are outsourcing. In my first few years on the job, my IT skill set kept me in my position. My ability to provide solutions to problems and know my way around a number of languages, products etc. Towards the end of my tenure what became more usefull was my ability to sit in meetings, say yes to the right people and stop my ear catching on fire when on 4 hour long conference calls on the mobile phone. My eventual dismissal came after breaching health and saftey regulations (Driving too many miles in a day, completing a task that was neither IT related or with any significance to the business from what I could see). I am lucky because my previous management team had left the shop floor a number of years ago and have been after my services within an hour of the announcement being made. The new breed of IT people being recruited have no technical degree, infact an IT degree is not a requirement, knowing who to call and who to outsource too is the current requirement. I would like to say that I took the fall as a cost saving measure, but the new breed start on significantly more. Personally I love working in IT, or IT as it was before. Now I have serious doubts, everyone I speak to tells me to contract and to be honest if working in a permanent IT position means that I have too spend a whole morning speaking to dozens of different people in a number of countries to arrange for a task to be completed that would honestly only take up 30 mins of my own time if I was to do it myself then I don't really wish to stay in the industry. I am hoping that I have got out at the right time, I doubt it though....
Guess what job Money magazine ranked #1 in the US right now?
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/
If you're that uptight about clothes or appearance, be ready for a long long long trip down misery lane. The world is largely about conforming, however loosely, to the "normal".
;) Overdoing either of the others to "stand out" indicates to me the lack of ability to work with others.
If you put 20 people in a group, even those that look conservative, you won't find a single "normal" person as you'd think of "normal". Perhaps you should widen your horizons a little, or seek the help of a good psychiatrist.
Lastly, clothes are just clothes, jewelry is just jewelry, hair is just hair. While shaving your head indicates to me that you're covering the fact that you're balding
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Q: What's the difference between a tenured professor and a terrorist?
A: You can negotiate with a terrorist.
My new career goal is to end up being a cranky old professor at a podunk liberal arts college off in the middle of nowhere.
Language needed for software development is English -- most applications in demand and customers to buy them demand it.
In fact, a good knowledge of English is EXACTLY what will put you ON TOP of foreign shops.
The formula for Employability is SIMPLE:
Employability (and Value) = Knowledge * Skills * Experience
Salary and employability are directly related to what VALUE you OFFER the client. Why should I pay $51K for someone fresh out of college with no real-world skills or experience? (When I can have a software developer in India with 5 or 6 years of senior-level experience for $15 to $20 per hour?)
On a second point, "for pennies on the dollar" is pure BS. There are NO developers ANYWHERE who work for pennies on the dollar these days -- I state this from the experience of having contracted out dozens of projects through rentacoder and other similar services.
Why should I work harder for less pay? It does not make sense that over time workload and competition goes up while wages go down - way down for Americans. I made $50k/yr in 1999 now if I could even land a $25k IT job which I haven't been able to yet, I would have to work twice as hard than in 1999 to keep it.
http://mitchellconsulting.net/commonsense/?p=76 College freshmen interest in computer science falls off cliff
Job and economic insecurity have been the lefts best friend. Just take a look at who has taken over south america in the wake of the turbo-capitalist's wreckage And mexico is gonna go socialist next according to the polls. In a way i would like to encourage the outsourcers.
Nigh on impossible. That would mean immediate ban on u.s. software commodities in europe. The german crowd would like it very much and would immediately fill in the gap with open source stuff though.
Read radical news here
Or take up lawn maintenance. It'll save you from being offshored.
I like to resolve problems in my sleep, in fact it seems like I never sleep. Do you think I have problems? hehe. If you don't like resolving problems in your sleep it might burn you out also hehe.
When Spain and Portugal joined the EU, the cries of panic from the workers (and populists, xenophobes and all such distinguished ilk) in richer countries (Germany and France back then) was immediate.
The rich countries were going to be swamped, the jobs were going to be gone, disaster could not be averted.
20 years later Spain and Portugal are prosperous countries, France and Germany are struggling.
But you will find impossible to find any sane economist of politician that would blame Portuguese or Spanish immigration for the problems of France and Germany.
Most likely you will find that the protectionist policies of France and Germany combined with a rigid job market are to blame. Most serious imigration studies (i.e. not sponsored by Neonazis) say that immigration has a positive net effect in the society that receives the immigrants.
You say that unskilled Mexicans take US jobs. Well, if my unskilled compatriots can take jobs that US people could be doing then you should question how bad your education system is, since unskilled people can take those jobs (you guys have an average of High School education or thereabouts. If we can beat you with 6 or 8 years less of education, either we are tremendsouly clever or you are brain dead. Most likely we are not competing for the same jobs).
Mexicans take the jobs that nobody else wants (cleaners, dish washers, gardeners, cotton or tomato pickers, etc) filling inneficiencies in the US economic system (if the Mexicans did not do those jobs, who would Mr Sherlock?)
And Mexicans do it gladly expecting little or nothing in return. Until now at least, we are a patient bunch. We demand nothing for long, but once we get tired we get down to bussiness to get what is rightly ours.
Mexicans (and other poor immigrants) are not taking skilled or semiskilled jobs, they are taking the jobs they can do (unskilled ones), so square this circle for me Sherlock:
-Who would do the jobs Mexicans are doing now?
-How would you remove 10 million or more people doing productive work?
-Who will be rushing to cover those positions once the Mexicans were stopped or gone?
I really wish that the US goverment and racists and xenophobes that circle them were really serious about building that 2000km wall in the Rio Bravo.
Nothing would provide me more pleasure than them retreating once the people doing productive work in the US, the families that otherwise would not have a clean house or a nice nanny looking after their children and in general the people benefitting from Mexicans' work in the US, once these people gave the xenophobes a reality check.
But the US government is not stupid. They know that by pretending to be though without actually doing anything they get to have their cake and eat it: on the one hand they placate the xenophobes, on the other hand they get fresh workers (never mind if a few hundred die while crossing the border every year) badly needed by the US economy (hint Sherlock: if there were no jobs in the US Mexicans will not go there. We are badly treated and insulted in the US, it is the need that make us go there).
Finally, before you blame the Mexican goverment for not taking care of its citizens, I just want to remind you that when we elected our first democratic leader your embassador backed a murderous general that executed it. That was followed by 70 or so years of a "perfect dictatorship" as one of the greatest writers in Latinamerica put it.
Your country keeps our countries poor, and reaps the cheap labour, pretending to be offended by the "invassion" in the process. A real work of evil genius.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It's really not that difficult. Just have decent technical skills and one or more of the following:
1) Excellent grasp of English and writing skills
2) Some kind of paper that says you have knowledge in a business area (i.e., CPA, CFP, business degree) so that you're valuable on IT projects in that area
3) Strong enough interpersonal skills that you can use to develop a personal "trust" relationship with clients
That's really all it takes. There are a LOT of IT jobs that require these things, more than can be filled, and such qualities are difficult to get from a $5/hr coder in India or China, or even a foreign import working for $35K here.
You may still lose your job due to conditions in your industry/company/technology, but there will generally be another one waiting for people that can bridge the IT/business communication gap.
You don't have to "conform." I know I sure as hell refuse to. You can however work within the confines of what people can expect with clotheing. Rolling up sleves is acceptable. Bodily mutilation is not. It's very eaisy to dress "your style" without infringeing on what people percieve as "the norm" without much effort. The only problem is you generaly can't get those looks from Walmart and other big B&M stores. Hell I almost want to say anything localy is a miss in those terms. Then again it's possible you live somewhere like San Franciso. Best way to find a look imo thats acceptable is to travel around the world. You can end up so different from everyone else that way and shockingly they accept it. And btw going freelance and haveing stuff like those earhoops is a NIGHTMARE. Thats what I do and I almost have to wear a damn necktie with some of the clients.
Now, here is the reality. The market for unskilled labor operates just like any other market for goods or services. If a shortage occurs in the market for unskilled labor, then wages will rise, and working conditions will improve as employers attempt to attract potential employees. When those wages rise, more and more Americans will enter the market for unskilled labor.
Shortages are a normal part of the free market and do not need to be fixed by a guest-worker program or illegal-alien labor. If all the illegal aliens returned to India, Mexico, Phillipines, etc., then the American economy would function just fine.
People who claim that shortages are "abnormal" and need to be fixed by importing dirt-cheap labor from foreign countries are, at best, morons or, at worst, political demagogues.
Again, shortages of labor are a normal part of the free market. Shortages correct the underpricing labor. When government intervenes (by importing desperate labor from Mexico) to fix (i.e., eliminate) the shortage, then the price (i.e., the wages and salaries) of labor stagnates or falls. So, yes, "intervention damages the normal operation of the free market" (to quote the original poster).
You don't have the slighest idea what your talkin about. The fact is the IT market IS in the dumper now. Unlike you i offer back-up and not just my "disconnected from reality" opinion College freshmen interest in computer science falls off cliff http://mitchellconsulting.net/commonsense/?p=7
Proof that the offshoring is an overexagerated issue? Look at average salaries of graduates. They may not be as high as you want them, but compared with any other fields they are consistently towards the top. Even now, with so much media attention focusing on the downturn in the tech economy, I doubt you would receive very much sympathy for having to receive a starting salary of over 51k. (Starting Salaries) [cnn.com]
That is for 2005, this is for 2006. As an additional note, Computer Science pays less then 51k (2% less then 2005, $50,046). I suppose that comment is no longer directly true for said graduates since this February.
I lived in Montana for a while and I don't understand why more people don't live there. Cheap property, beautiful land, enough ammenities in the bigger cities (helena, missoula etc), and oh did I mention cheap? Of course I have no idea about job situations there.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
So, contrary to what Lou Dobbs would have you believe, IT and High Tech jobs are not leaving the US for India and China. IT and High Tech is alive and well in the US and will be for some time.
Obviously you havent lived where they still want to do this economically unsound approach. You sound like the kind that would rather see him off the air - which seems to lend some if not a lot of truth to that message. Guess your kind is quite hurt enough to throw blood money (from slave labor countries such as India and China) to get him (and like minded people) out of the public view.
When I speak to companies who are doing offshoring these days, I am not hearing issues about labor costs at the front of the back. Rather, it is about finding specific skill sets and to attract people who don't want to live in Silicon Valley, the US, etc. Least you think the last point is fantasy, I personally know of a good 1/2 dozen folks who have moved to India and China (accepting local pay packages) in order to have a better quality of life (for example, household servants).
Cao ni ma de.
Well, if you like to live in a country that exploits its own physically as it does to the world politically, fine. Just dont be surprised when you cant get anything of quality and that your every move is watched even more carefully. Forget protests, unless your family wants to pay for the bullets. While the EU/US kick out the free-exploiters *again*, you'll live in a society that will not care if you die to some "accident".
As for those companies that you deal with, I bet they're also some of the ones that want Dobbs out. No sense in trying to endrun the US wages if everyone sees that you're trying to recreate the Gilded Age again.
Simply put, salaries cannot grow at this rate (a CAGR of 29%) for an extended period of time without coming into line with those in the US. The ratio between the US and India is no longer 1:10, it is more like 1:4 and shrinking. This is the reality of a world which is flat. Things reach a point of balance. And in this case, the point of balance is moving up.
Unfortunately, you're not going to get more than a lynch mob in the Midwest after you've taken their job to India, and only jack up education costs to insane levels. Community colleges do not a solution make; it is the redirection of existing subsidy in other areas to education, and the removal of any ability to exclude people from any institution for any reason.
Sounds like the moderation was done with the only knowledge that free-trade in practice does not become exploitative trade. Maybe when the people can speak up(e.g. the rightful rewriting of the CPE after public input) and see the US as a bad example of it, they know what happens if they allow free-trade policies to enter. It's not competition when you throw the game by offshoring, even in trade. Aptly said. One does not throw a match in a competition, and similarly, one does not hand the country over in trade.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
I wish I were as sure of that as you are. People on the low end of the income scale sure seem to want the taxes on the highest 1% of earners in the US to be lower, if not nonexistent, just based on the one in four hundred thousand chance that they will end up among them.
Well, given the current set of things, it's also the tax shelters and credits that the majority (in your definition) will never get to use, and measures such as the AMT that end up creating a large speed bump that appears to slow any advancement into "favorable" tax brackets. Combine that with conditions disfavorable to forming a middle class, and it wont be surprising when you do have a mostly 2 class society. It's that the Rust Belt and places similar to that are further down the line than the rest of the country with the 1-2 punch of offshoring driving out steady jobs while keeping education and the ability to move to prosperity further out of reach.
The most hated tax in the US today is the estate tax, a tax that over 95% of the country will never even feel, and which only impacts people who are basically trying to maintain a landed gentry in the United States.
The Alternative Minimum Tax would probably come in a close second, due to the intent not matching the reality of things due to the known flaws. The current design intends to affect the 1% in a socially favorable way but only shuts the door to loopholes that still exist.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's a fine idea to study programming/IT even if you end up not actually practicing it in the future. You'll make a better architect, project manager, sales person, whatever. Study what interests you. As previous posts mention, combine that with foreign language and you've got a promising future as the economic playing field levels out. This subject always brings out the best and worst in people. There are going to be new opportunities as the landscape changes. -Todd http://flatworldsoftwaredevelopment.com/